LIFE OF THE RIGHT HON. 

JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 




' <e 



'V, 



^Vi 



JOME" FMI 



IT 




? -^ '~>^~y' 



THE LIFE OF 



THE RIGHT HONORABLE 



JOHN PHILPOT OUERAN 



LATE MASTER OF THE ROLLS IN IRELAND 



BY HIS SON 



WILLIAM HENRY CCRRAN 



WITH ADDITIONS AND NOTES 

BY R. SHELTON MACKENZIE, D.C.L, 





K E D F I E L D 

34 BEEKMAN STREET, NEW YORK 

1855 

No./, 






\^5S 



EicTEEED According to Act of Congress, in the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty five, by 
J. S. REDFIELD, in the Clerk's OfiBeo of the District Court of the United SUtes, for the Southern 
District of New York. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 



7X 



John Philpot Curran, one of the truest patriots and greatest men 
ever native of Irish soil, was the centre of the sparkling wits, the 
renowned orators, the brilliant advocates, and the honored statesmen who 
flashed upon the darkness of his country's latest hours of freedom, and 
vainly endeavored to maintain the national independence which they had 
achieved for her. His life is identified with the latest years of Ireland's 
nationality. He manifested an independence as advocate for the accused, 
during the State Trials, which endeared him to the people from whose 
ranks he sprung. To use the words of Thomas Davis (who resembled him 
in many things), he was '• a companion unrivalled in sympathy and wit ; 
an orator, whose thouglits went forth like ministers of nature, with robes of 
light and swords in their hands ; a patriot, who battled best when the flag 
was trampled down ; and a genuine earnest man, breathing of his climate, 
his country, and his time." 

He has been fortunate in his biographers. The life by his Son (who is 
yet living), contains materials which were inaccessible to other writers. 
Also came a volume of Recollections by Charles Phillips, who knew him well 
in his later years — a work which, greatly enlarged, was republished a few 
years ago, with all the charm of novelty. Later still appeared the Memoir, 



VI PUEFACE. 

by Thomas Davis, prefixed to his edition of Curraa's Speeches — a brilliant 
but brief tribute by one honest and gifted man to the worth and memory 
of another. Anterior to all these is the Memoir, by William O'Regan (the 
friend and contemporary of Curran, and often engaged with him in the 
same causes), written during Curran's lifetime, with his knowledge, if not 
with his direct sanction, and published within six weeks after his death — 
a book little known, but full of interesting personal details, and abounding 
with anecdotal and other illustrations of Curran's wit. 

It appeared to me that there was sufficient in the career and character 
of Curran to interest not only the members of his own profession but a 
large number of general readers in this country. I have therefore 
taken the life by his Son, and without alterations or omissions, have 
introduced a large quantity of new matter, principally relating to his 
legislative and personal life. These additions will be found between 
brackets, and, with the notes which I have occasionally found it requi- 
site to add, have made the Memoir more full of interest than any yet 
presented. 

In the Appendix I have placed a few specimens of the wit with which 
Curran and his friends were wont "to set the table in a roar." 

The portrait which embellishes this work is a characteristic likeness, by 
Comerford, of Dublin, now for the first time engraved in this country, and 
little known even in Ireland, 

R. Skelton Mackenzie. 

JSfew Yo)'k, September 20, 1855. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

Mr. Curran's origin — His parents— Early education — Originally intended for the Church — 
Enters Trinity College — His ardour for the classics^-Letter to Mr. Stack — Anecdote of 
his Mother — Her Epitaph— While in College fixes on the Bar — Anecdote connected with 
the change of Profession — His character in College— Addicted to Metaphysics — Anec- 
dote on the subject — Verses to Apjohn 1 

CHAPTER II. 

Mr. Currau leaves College — Enters the Middle Temple— Letter to Mr. AVeston — Letter to 
Mr. Keller — His first attempts in Oratory fail — His own account of the failure, and of 
his first success — A regular attendant at Debating Clubs— Anecdotes — His Poem on 
Friendship — Dr. Creagh's character of him — Mr. Hudson's predictions and friendship — 
His early manners and habits — Subject to constitutional melancholy — Letters from 
London — His society in London — Anecdote of his interview with Macklin — His early 
application and attainments — Favorite authors — Eai-ly attachment to the Irish peas- 
antry — His marriage — Remarks upon the English Law 17 

CHAPTER III. 

Mr, Curran called to the Irish Bar — Dissimilarities between that and the English Bar — 
Causes of the Difference 58 

CHAPTER IV. 

Mr. Curran's early success at the bar— His contest with Judge Robinson— His defence of 
a Roman Catholic priest — His duel with Mr. St. Leger — Receives the dying benediction 
of the priest — Lord AVonmore's friendship — His character of Lord Avonmore — Monks 
of St. Patrick, and list of the original members — Anecdotes of Lord Avonmore — Mr. 
Curran's entrance into Parliament 69 



Tin CONTEXTS. 



CHAPTER V. 



The Irish House of Commons, in 17S3— Sketch of the previous history of Ireland— Effects 
of the revolution of 16SS— Catholic penal code — System of governing Ireland— Described 
by Mr. Curran — Intolerance and degradation of the Irish parliament— Change of sys- 
tem — Octennial bill — American revolution — Its effects upon Ireland— The Irish volun- 
teers — Described by Mr. Curran — Their numbers, and influence upon public measures 
— Irish revolution of 17S2 — Mr. Grattan's public services — Observations upon the sub- 
sequent conduct of the Irish parliament ST 

CHAPTER YI. 

Mr. Flood's plan of Parliamentary Reform — Mr. Curran's contest and duel with Mr. Pitz- 
gibbon (afterwards Lord Clare)— Speech on Pensions — His professional success — Mode 
of life — Occasional verses — Visits France — Letters from Dieppe and Rouen — Anecdote 
— Letters from Paris — Anecdote — Letter from Mr. Boyse — Anecdote of Mr. Boyse — Let- 
ters from Holland 106 

CHAPTER YII. 

His Majesty's illness— Communicated to the House of Commons — Mr. Curran's speech 
upon the Address — Regency question — Formation of the Irish Whig opposition — Mr. 
Curran's speech and motion upon the division of the boards of stamps and accounts — 
Answered by Sir Boyle Roche — Mr. Curran's reply — Correspondence and duel with 
Major Hobart— Effects of Lord Clare's enmity — Alderman Howison's case 134 

CHAPTER VIII. 

State of parties— Trial of Hamilton Rowan— Mr. Curran's fidelity to his party— Rev. 
William Jackson's Trial, Conviction, and Death— Remarks upon that Trial— Irish 
Informers— Irish Juries— The influence of the times upon Mr. Curran's style of 
Oratory -. 166 

CHAPTER IX. 

Catholic Emancipation— Mr. Curran moves an address to the Throne for an inquiry into 
the state of the poor — Other Parliamentary questions — Mr. Ponsonby's plan of Reform 
rejected— Secession of Mr. Curran and his friends— Orr's trial— Finnerty's trial— Fin- 
ney's Trial— The informer, James O'Brien 195 



CONTENTS. ix 

CHAPTER X. 

Rebellion of 179S— Its causes— Unpopular system of Government— Influence of the 
French revolution — Increased intelligence in Ireland — Reform societies — United Irish- 
men — Their views and proceedings — Apply for aid to France — Anecdote of Theobald 
Wolfe Tone — Numbers of the United Irishmen — Condition of the peasantry and conduct 
of the aristocracy — Measures of the Government — Public alarm — General insurrec- 
tion 234 

CHAPTER XI. 
Trial of Henry and John Sheares 255 

CHAPTER XII. 

Trials of M'Cann, Byrne, and Oliver Bond— Reynolds the informer— Lord Edward Fitz- 
gerald—His attainder— Mr. Curran's conduct upon the State Trials— Lord Kilwarden's 
friendship— Lines addressed by Mr. Curran to Lady Charlotte Rawdon— Theobald 
Wolfe Tone— His trial and death 293 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Effects of the Legislative Union upon Mr, Curran's mind— Speech in Tandy's case— Speech 
in behalf of Hevey— Allusion in the latter to Mr. Godwin— Mutual friendship of Mr. 
Curran and Mr. Godwin 31S 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Mr. Curran visits Paris— Letter to his son— Insurrection of 1S03— Defence of Kirwan— 
Death of Lord Kilwarden— Intimacy of Mr. Robert Emmett in Mr. Curran's family, and 
its consequences— Letter from Mr. Emmett to Mr. Curran— Letter from the same to Mr. 
Richard Curran S38 

CHAPTER XV. 

Mr. Curran's domestic affairs— Forensic efforts— Appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland 
— His literary projects— Letter to Mr. M'Nally— Account of a visit to Scotland in a letter 
to Miss Philpot— Letter to Mr. Leslie— Letters to Mr. Hetherington 357 

CHAPTER XYI. 

Mr. Curran is invited to stand for the borough of Newry— Speech to the electors— Letter 
to Sir J. Swinburne— Letter on Irish affairs to II. R. U. the Dake of Sussex 896 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XVi: 



Mr. Cui-ran's health declines— Letters to Mr. Hetherington— Resignation of his judicial 
office — Letters from London to Mr. Lube — Letters from Paris to the same — His last 
illness and death 417 

CHAPTER XVIII, 

Observations on Mr. Curran's Eloquence— Objections to his Style considered— His hnbits 
of preparation for Public Speaking — His Ideas of Popular Eloquence — His Pathos — 
Variety of his powers — His Imagination — Peculiarity of his Images— His use of Ridicule 
— Propensity to Metaphor — Irish eloquence — Its origin — Mr. Curran's and Burke's 
eloquence compared 466 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Mr. Curran's skill in cross-examination — His general reading — His conversation— His 
wit — Manuscript thoughts on various subjects — His manners — Person — Personal pecu- 
liarities — Conclusion 496 



APPENDIX. 

Anecdotes of Curran and his friends 517 



LIFE OF 



THE 



RIGHT HON. JOHN PHILPOT CUllRAN. 



CHAPTER I. 

Mr. Curran's origin — His parents— Early education — Originally intended for the Church — 
Enters Trinity College — His ardour for the classics — Letter to Mr. Stack — Anecdote of 
his Mother — Her Epitaph— While in College fixes on the Bar — Anecdote connected with 
the change of Profession — His character in College — Addicted to Metaphysics — Anec- 
dote on the subject — Verses to Apjohn. 

John Philpot Curran was born on the 24th day of July, 1750, 
at New^market, an obscure town of the county of Cork, in Ireland.* 
In several accounts that have been published of his origin and 
advancement, it has, by a general consent, been asserted that the 
one w^as very low and the other unassisted ; that he was the sole 
architect of his own fortune, and the sole collector of the mate- 
rials which were to raise it ; and lovers of the marvellous impli- 
citly believed and repeated the assertion. Let not, however, the 
admirers of what is rare, be offended at being told, that, no matter 
how much praise may be due to his personal merit (and the allow- 
ance unquestionably should not be scanty), a portion must still be 
given to the institutions of his country, and to those relatives and 
friends whose industry and protection placed him in a condition 
of sharing their advantages. It is of far more importance to the 
intellectual interests of men to diffuse a rational confidence in the 

* Newmarket is eight miles distant from the dismantled castle of Kilcolman, where Spen- 
cer is said to have composed his " Faery Queen." — M. 

1 



iJ LIFE OF CUKRAX. 

efficacy of instruction, than idly to excite tlieir wonder, and per- 
haps their despair, by insinuating that there are persons who, by 
nature, are above it. It is not by hearing that the subject of the 
following pages was a heaven-taught, unaided genius, that others 
can be encouraged to emulate his mental excellencies, but by 
learning the real, and to him no less creditable ffict, how he 
studied and struggled — what models he selected — what deficien- 
cies he corrected — by what steps he ascended ; to tell this is the 
duty of his biographer, and not to amaze his readers by unin- 
structive panegyric. 

The lowness* of his orimn has been much exao-Q-erated. His 
father, James Curran, who has been represented as an unlettered 
peasant, was Seneschal of a manor court at Newmarket.f It is 
confidently asserted, by those who knew him, that he possessed a 
mind and acquirements above his station ; that he was familiar 
with the Greek and Roman classics, which he often cited in con- 



* When Mr. Curran had i-isen to eminence, many tables of his pedigree were sent him, 
all of them varying, and the most of them, he conceived, too flattering to be authentic. 
Among his papers is the latest of these, tendered to him while he was Master of the 
Rolls, and made out by a resident of his native i>lace. In the paternal line it ascends no 
higher than his grandfather, who is stated to have been "a north-countryman, of the 
county Derry, from which, having met with disappointments, he came and settled in the 
county Cork :" it adds, that " his only son, Mr. Curran's father, was educated at a school 
in Newmarket, then kept by the Rev. Mr. Dallis, and afterwards by the Rev. Mr. Mor- 
duck, by whom he was considered the best Greek and Latin scholar in their school." In 
the maternal line, it presents a long list of ancestors, among whom are judges, bishops, 
and noblemen ; but Mr. Curran has marked his incredulity or his indifference by indors- 
ing this paper with " Stemmata quid faciunt." Some otlier pedigrees derived his descent 
from the English family of Curwcn in Cumberland. — C. [O'Uegan, who was Curran's con- 
temporary, and long on the most intimate terms with him, saj's that the family was " of an 
English stock, transplanted from one of the north.ern counties, and encouraged to settle 
in that part of Ireland, under the protection of the highly respectable family of the All- 
worth's, who retain considerable landed estates there to the present time, acquired after 
the fall of the Desmonds." Phillips says, that the paternal ancestor of the Curran family 
came over to Ireland one of Cromwell's soldiers, " and the most ardent patriot she ever 
had owed his origin to her most merciless and cruel plunderer !" — M.] 

t The emoluments of the oflBce were very small. The Aldworth estates at Newmarket 
(formerly belonging to the Irish family or clan of the McAuliffes) consisted of 32,000 
acres. As Seneschal, James Curran had jurisdiction to the value of forty shillings, and 
thus was— a Judge !— M. 



Ills MOTHEK. 6 

versation; that he delighted in disputation, and excelled in it; 
and, among his other favorite subjects of discussion, it is still 
remembered, that, after his son's return from college, the old man 
was frequently to be found in ardent contention with him upon 
the metaphysical doctrines of Locke.^' 

His mother, whose maiden name was Philpot, belonged to a 
family well known and respected, and of which the descendants 
continue in the class of gentry. She was a woman of a strong 
original understanding, and of admitted superiority, in the circles 
where she moved.f In her latter years, the celebrity of her son 
rendered her an objecti> additional attention and scrutiny ; and 
the favorers of the opinion that talent is hereditary, thought they 
could discover, in the bursts of irregular eloquence that escaped 
her, the first visible gushings of the stream, which, expanding as 
it descended, at length attained a force and grandeur that incited 
the admirer to explore its source. This persuasion Mr. Curran 
himself always fondly cherished — " The only inheritance," he used 
to say, " that I could boast of from my poor father, was the very 
scanty one of an unattractive face and person like his own ; and if 
the world has ever attributed to me something more valuable than 
face or person, or than earthly wealth, it was that another and a 
dearer parent gave her child a portion from the treasure of her 
mind." He attributed much of his subsequent fortune to the 
early influence of such a mother ; and to his latest hour would 
dwell with grateful recollection upon the wise counsel, upon the 
lessons of honourable ambition, and of sober, masculine piety. 



* Phillips says, " old James Curran's education was pretty much in the ratio of his 
income." Thomas Davis says that Curran's father had learned reading, writing, cypher- 
ing, and, it is said, some Greek and Latin. — M. 

t " She was of gentle blood, and what is more to our purpose, she had a deep, fresh, 
womanly, irregular mind ; it was like the clear river [the Avendala] of her town, that 
came gushing and flashing and discoursing from the lonely mountains — from the outlaw's 
and the fairy's home— down to the village. She had, under an exalted piety, a waste of 
passions and traditions lying grand and gloomy in her soul, and thence, a bright, human 
love of her son, came pouring out on him, and making him grow green at her feet." — 
Davis. 



4: LIFE OF CUREAX. 

whicli she enforced upon the minds of her children. She was not 
without her reward, she lived to see the dearest of them surpass- 
ing every presage, and accumulating public honors upon a name, 
wdiich she, in her station, had adorned by her virtues. 

John Philpot, the eldest of their sons,* having given very 
early indications of an excellent capacity, the Rev. Nathaniel 
Boyse, the resident clergyman at Newmarket, pleased with the 
boy, and moved by regard for his parents, received him into 
his house, and by his own personal tuition initiated him in the 
rudiments of classical learning. This, his first acquired friend 
and instructor, had also the satisfaction of seeing all his care 
repaid by the rapidity with which its object ascended to dis- 
tinction, and still more by the unceasing gratitude with which 
he ever after remembered the patron of liis childhood. Many 
of this gentleman's letters to him, written at a subsequent period, 
remain ; and it is not unpleasing to observe in them the striking 
revolution that a few years had effected in the fortunes of his 
pupil. In some of them the little villager, whom he had adopted, 
is seen exalted into a senator, and is solicited by his former pro- 
tector to procure the enactment of a statute that might relieve 
himself and all of the clergy from the vexations of the tythe- 
laws. 

The rapid progress that he made under the instructions of Mr. 
Boyse, and the fond predictions of his parents, determined them 
to give their son, wdiat has always been a prevailing object of 
parental ambition in Ireland, a learned education. It was also 
their wish, which he did not oppose at the time, that he should 
eventually enter the church. With- this view he was soon trans- 
ferred to the free-school of Middleton, upon which occasion his 
generous friend insisted upon resigning a particular ecclesiastical 
emolument (in value 101. a year) for the purpose of partly defray- 
ing the expenses of his young favorite's studies.f He remained 

* Mr. Curran had three brothers and a sister, all of M-hom he survived. 

t O'Regan says that he was "transplanted" to the school of Middleton, by Mrs. 



HIS CHILDHOOD. 5 

at this school until lie had attained the preparatory knowledge of 
the Greek and Latin languages, which should capacitate him to 
become a student of Trinity College, Dublin. It may not be un- 
worthy of remark, that the same seminary had, a few years before 
sent up to the capital the late Lord Avonmore, then commencing 
his career in circumstances, and with a success so resemblinp- those 
of his future friend.* 

The early history of eminent persons so generally contains 
some presaging tokens of the fortune that awaits them, that some- 
thing of the kind may be expected here, yet Mr. Curran's child- 
hood, if tradition can be credited, was not marked by much pro- 
phetic originality.f At the first little school in the town of New- 
market to which he resorted, previous to his reception into Mr. 
Boyse's family, he used to say that he was noted for his simplicity, 
and was incessantly selected as the dupe and butt of his play-fel- 
lows. This, however, it would appear that he soon laid aside, for 

Aldworth. In mature life, speaking of this lady, Curran said, " It is not to be wondered 
at, that she does not do all that is expected of her. To be enabled so to do, nature 
should have supplied her with three hands. It is impossible that, stintedly furnished 
as she is, she could accomplish the great purposes of her heart; she is not prepared for 
so enlarged a charity. Such in truth is her benevolence, that she would have occasion 
for the constant employment of three hands ; but having only two, and these always 
engaged, one in holding the petition of the poor, the other in wiping away the tears 
which flow for their distresses ; and not having a third to put into her poclcet for their 
relief, she is thus rendered incapable of administering to tlieir wants; but still she is 
excellent, and her heart is bountiful." — M. 

* Another of Curran's schoolfellows at Middleton, was Jeremiah Keller, subsequently 
well known as the witty and sardonic senior of the Munster bar. He presided, says 
Shell, at their mess, " and ruled in all the autocracy of wit." Yelverton, afterwards 
Viscount Avonmore, and, for more than twenty-one years. Lord Chief Baron of the 
Exchequer, in Ireland, was foui-teen years older than Curran — which leads me to doubt 
their having been at school together, though, no doubt, both had been educated by the 
same master, Mr. Carey. Robert Day, afterwards one of the Irish Judges, and a 
friend of Grattan's, is also said to have been Curran's schoolfellow. — M. 

t Thomas Davis, who was himself from that part of Ireland, honored by Curran's 
birth and pupilage, gathered up many recollections of his childood, which had floated 
down to these later times, on the current of tradition. He reports, from there, that 
Curran, at school, was " a vehement boy, fonder of fun than books." He describes him 
as being among the hills and the streams, bis father's court, the fairs, markets, and 
merry-makings, and his mother's lap. He learned much passion and sharpness, and 
some vices, too.— M. 



6 I.IFE OF CUERAN. 

a puppet-show having arrived in Newmarket, and Punch's promp- 
ter being taken suddenly ill, he, then a very little boy, volunteered 
to perform the sick man's duty, and seizing the opportunity, mer- 
cilessly satirized the reigning vices of the neighbours. This is 
almost the only exploit of his childhood that has been related. 

He entered Trinity College as a sizer, in 1769, being then nine- 
teen years old, an age at which the students of the present day 
have, for the most part, nearly completed their college course.* 
Here he studied the classical writings of antiquity with great 
ardour, and with eminent success. JSTor did his enthusiastic admira- 
tion of them ever after subside. Amidst all the distractions of 
business and ambition, he was all his life returning with fresh 
dehght to their perusal; and in the last journey that he ever took, 
Horace and Virgil were his travelling companions. He obtained 
a scholarship, and that his general scholastic attainments were not 
inconsiderable, may be inferred from his having commenced a 
course of reading for a fellowship,! but, deterred by the labor, or 
diverted by accident, he soon gave up the project. 

When Ave reflect upon the lustre of his future career, it becomes 
a matter of natural curiosity to inquire how far his mind now 
began to indicate those qualities, by which it was to be subse- 
quently so distinguished ; and upon this interesting subject there 
happened to be preserved some documents, principally a portion 
of his early correspondence and his first poetical attempts, from 
Avhich a few occasional extracts shall be offered, for the purpose 
of giving some idea of the writer's juvenile habits and capacity. 
Whatever may be considered to be their intrinsic merit, several 



* Curran entered Trinity College, Dublin, on the 16th June, 1769. The examination is a 
severe one, but Curran's answering must have been vej-y good, as he obtained the second 
place at entrance. His Sizarship entitled him to free rooms and commons, at College. — M. 

i O'Regjin states that besides acquiring an intimate acquaintance with the Classics, 
Curran had made considerable advance in science, particularly in metaphysics and 
morality, while the purest modern classics in the English and French literature, became 
equally familiar to liim. With the Bible he was familiar, and once said, "It would be a 
reproach not to examine the merits of a work in which all mankind are so much engaged, 
and have taken so deep an interest."—?.!. 



LETTER OF UR. STACK. 7 

of them were at least written with considerable care, and may 
therefore be introduced as no unfair specimens of the progress of 
his intellectual strength. To the student of eloquence their 
defects will not be without instruction, if they inspire him with a 
reliance upon that labor and cultivation, which alone conduct to 
excellence. 

One of the most intimate friends of Mr. Curran's youth, and of 
his riper years, was the late Rev. Richard Stack, his contemporaiy 
at Trinity College, and since a fellow of that University.^' The 
following is a formal letter of consolation to that gentleman upon 
the death of a brother. The writer had just completed his 20th 
year, and appears to have been so pleased with his performance, 
that no less than three transcripts of it remain in his own hand- 
writing. 

" Dublin, August 20, 1770. 

"Dear Dick. 

"I am sorry to find by your letter (which I have just now 
received), that you judge my silence for some time past Avith so 
much more severity than it deserves. Can my friend suspect me 
of being unconcerned at his sorrows ? I would have wrote to you 
on hearing from Vincent of his late misfortune, but that I was 
unwilling to press a subject upon your thoughts which you should 
take every means of avoiding. To offer consolation to a man of 
sense, upon the first stroke of affliction, is perhaps one of the most 
cruel offices that friendship can be betrayed into. All the fine 
things that can be addressed to the fancy will have but small 
eftect in removing a distemper fixed in the heart. Time and 
reflection only can cure that ; and happy is it for us that in this 
chequered scene, where everything feels perpetual decay, and 
seems created only for dissolution, our sorrows cannot boast of 
exemption from the common fate. Time, though he sometimes 
tears up our happiness by the roots, yet, to make amends for that, 

* Mr. Stack wrote a Treatise on Optics, long a College Text-book. — M. 



8 LIFE OF CrRRAN. 

kindly holds out a remedy for our afflictions; and thougli he 
violently breaks. our dearest connexions, yet he is continually 
teachino- us to be prepared for the blow. 'Tis true, nature on 
these occasions will weep, but, my dear Dick, reason and reflection 
should wipe away these tears. A few years may see us numbered 
with those whom we now regret, or will give us cause to congra- 
tulate those whose happy lot it was, by an early retreat from this 
scene of misery and disappointment, to escape those troubles which 
their survivors are reserved to suffer. 'Tis true, the inattention of 
youth will leave the great account more unsettled than might be 
wished ; but at this age, we have everything to plead for that 
defect — the violence of passions, want of reason to moderate them. 
Faults, no doubt we have, but thiey are the faults of youth, of in- 
experience ; not a course of wickedness riveted by habit, and 
aggravated by obdurate perseverance, which (heaven help us) in a 
length of years they may become ; but, above all, that Being who 
is pleased to call us so suddenly from hence, has mercy and com- 
passion to make allowance for these involuntary omissions. But I 
find I have fallen unawares upon a theme which I had no intention 
to pursue so far, as I was persuaded your own good sense would 
suggest much stronger reasons for your consolation than I could. 

" J. P. C." 

At the date of this letter, the wTiter, if he looked forward to 
fame, expected to find it in the pulpit ; but this, and a short religious 
discourse, are all that remain of his early compositions, which, 
from the style, would uppear to be written with a view to his first 
destination. Mr. Stack, however, entertained so very high an 
opinion of his talents for the solemn eloquence of the church, that 
being appointed a few years after (lY'ZS) to preach before the 
judges of assize at Cork, and being anxious that his matter should 
be worthy of his auditors, he entreated of his young friend, who 
was then upon the spot, and going his first circuit, to compose a 
sennon for the occasion. Mr. Curran complied ; and his produc- 



TRIBUTE TO IIIS MOTHER. 9 

tion excited such general admiration, that his mother, in answer 
to the congratulations of the neighbourhood upon so flattering a 
proof of her son's abilities, could not avoid tempering her mater- 
nal exultation with Christian regret, and exclaiming — " Oh, yes, it 
was very fine ; but it breaks my heart to think what a noble 
preacher was lost to the church when John disappointed us all, 
and insisted on becoming a lawyer." All his subsequent success 
and celebrity at the bar could never completely reconcile her to 
the change ; and in her latter years, when her friends, to gratify 
and console her, used to remind her that she had lived to see her 
favorite child one of the judges of the land, she would still reply — 
" Don't speak to me oi judges — John w^-as fit for anything ; and had 
he but followed our advice, it might hereafter be written upon my 
tomb, that I had died the mother of a bishop." 

This excellent and pious woman died about the year 1783, at 
the advanced age of eighty. It is not written upon her tomb that 
she died the mother of a bishop or of a judge ; but there is to be 
seen upon it an attestation to her worth from the son who was her 
pride, which, as long as virtue and filial gratitude are preferred to 
the glare of worldly dignities, will be considered as an epitaph no 
less honorable both to the parent and the child.* 

It was during the second year of his college studies that he 
fixed on the profession of the law. In his original intention of 
taking orders he had been influenced by the wishes of his friends, 



* Her remains lie in the churchyard of Newmarket ; over them is the following epitaph, 
written by Mr. Curran : 

HERE LIES THE BODY OF 

SARAH CURRAN. 

She was marked by 

Many Years, 

Many Talents, 

Many Virtues, 

Few Failings, 

No Crime. 

This frail memorial was placed here by a 

Son 

Whom she loved. 

1* 



10 LITE OF CUREAN. 

and by the promise of a small living in the gift of a distant rela- 
tive, and probably still more strongly by a habitual preference for 
the calling to which his early patron belonged ; but his ambition 
soon overruled all these motives, and he selected the bar as more 
suited to his temperament and talents. According to his own 
account, it was the following incident that suggested the first idea 
of a change in his destination. 

He had committed some breach of the college regulations, for 
which he was sentenced by the Censor, Dr. Patrick Duigenan, 
either to pay a fine of five shillings, or translate into Latin a num- 
ber of the Spectator. He found it more convenient to accept the 
latter alternative ; but, on the appointed day, the exercise was not 
ready, and some unsatisfactory excuse was assigned. Against the 
second oflfence a heavier penalty was denounced — he was con- 
demned to pronounce a Latin oration in laudem decori from the 
pulpit in the college chapel. He no longer thought of evading his 
sentence, and accordingly prepared the panegyric ; but when he 
came to recite it, he had not proceeded far before it was found to 
contain a mock model of ideal perfection, Avhich the Doctor 
instantly recognized to be a glaring satire upon himself. As soon, 
therefore, as the young orator had concluded, and descended from 
his station, he was summoned before the Provost and Fellows to 
account for his behaviour. Doctor Duigenan was not very popu- 
lar, and the Provost was secretly not dis])leased at any circum- 
stance that could mortify him. He, therefore, merely went 
through the form of calling upon the oftender for an explanation, 
and listening with indulgence to the ingenuity with which he 
attempted to soften down the libel, dismissed him with a slight 
reproof. When Mr. Curran returned among his companions, they 
surrounded him to hear the particulars of his acquittal. He 
reported to them all that he had said, " and all that he had not 
said, but that he might have said ;" and impressed them with so 
high an idea of his legal dexterity that they declared, by common 
acclamation, that the bar, and the bar alone, was the proper pro- 



HIS COLLEGE LtF'E. 11 

fession for one who possessed tlie talents of which he had that day 
given such a striking proof. He accepted the omen, and never 
after repented of his decision. 

In College he distinguished himself by his social powers. He 
had such a fund of high spirits and of popular anecdote ; his 
ordinary conversation was so full of " wit, and fun, and fire," that 
in the convivial meetings of his fellow-students he was never 
omitted. His general reputation among them was that of being 
veiy clever and very wild. He often joined in those schemes of 
extravagant frolic so prevalent in that University, and after one of 
the nocturnal broils to which they usually led, was left wounded 
and insensible from loss of blood to pass the remainder of the 
night on the pavement of Dublin. 

He was at this time supported partly from the funds appro- 
priated to the sizers, and partly by scanty remittances from New- 
market. But he was frequently without a shilling ; for he was 
incorrigibly impro^'ident, and would often squander, in entertain- 
ing his companions, what should have been meted out to answer 
the demands of the coming quarter. Yet, Avhatever his priva- 
t'ons were, he bore them with singular good humor, and when 
he had no longer money to treat his friends, he never failed to 
divert them with ludicrous representations of his distresses 
and expedients. 

One of his sayings while he was in College has been preserved, 
and is a favorable instance of the felicitous use that he made of 
his classical knowledge in the production of comical effect.* A 
fellow-student in reciting a Latin theme assigned a false quantity 



* Another classical application shews his readiness, if not his wit. A gentleman of 
very ordinary countenance, whose forehead was so prominent on the one side that it 
rose like a rugged hill, while on the other it was depressed like a valley, being charged 
by one of his friends with an affair of gallantry, blushed exceedingly, and defended him- 
self from the imputation by good humoredly offering his deformity as a proof of hja 
innocence ; on which Carran observed : " On the Jlrst hlush I should think you ought to 
be acquitted, but the maxim is stiil strong against jcu—Frpnti nulln ^des, nimiwn nt 
erede coloi-L"--M. 



12 • LIFE OF CFKRAX. 

to the syllable mi *n the word nimirum. A buzz of disapproba- 
tion succeeded ; Mr. C urran, to relieve his friend's confusion 
observed, '' that it was by no means surprising that an Irish 
student should be ignorant of what was known by only one man 
in Rome, according to the following testimony of Horace — 

'SSeptimius. Claudi. nimirum intelligit unus." 

He was at this early period remarkable for his disposition to 
subtle disputation and metaphysical inquiries, connected with 
which a circumstance may be mentioned that strikingly illus- 
trates the speculative propensities of his young and ardent mind. 
A frequent topic of conversation v.'ith one of his companions was 
the investigation of the nature of death and eternity, and the 
immortality of the soul ; but finding that the farther they 
follov.-ed the bewildering light of reason, the more they were " in, 
wandering mazes lost," they came to the romantic agreement, 
that whoever of them might first receive the summons to another 
state, should, if permitted, for once rensit the survivor, and 
relieve his doubts by revealing, whatever could be revealed to him, 
of the eternal secret. A very few years after, the summons came 
to Mr. Curran's friend, who, finding his end approach, caused 
a letter to be addressed to his former fellow-student, apprising him 
of the impending event, and of his intention to perform his pro- 
mise (if it should be allowed) on a particular night. The letter 
did not reach its destination till after the expiration of the 
appointed hour ; but it was the first, and the only intimation, that 
arrived of the writers decease. 

Something of the same turn of mind may be observed in a lit- 
tle poem that Mr. Curran wrote the year before he left Trinity 
College. One of his contemporaries there, was a young gentleman, 
named Apjohn, with whom he became intimately connected by a 
community of taste and pursuits, and who claims a passing men- 
tion as a friend from whose example and encouragement lio 



EARLY POETRY. 13 

derived the most important advantages at this trying period of 
his career, when hope and ardour were the most precious benefits 
that a friend could bestov/. 

During a temporary absence of Apjohn from college, a report 
reached his companions that he had died suddenly at his native 
place, Killaloe. It was soon discovered to have been unfounded, 
upon which occasion, while the others congratulated him in prose, 
his more ambitious friend addressed him in the following versos : 

TO W. APJOHN. 

Peace ! whining slut, dismiss those sighs, 
Those epitaphs and elegies ; 
And throwing off those weeds of sorrow, 
Go laughing bid my friend good morrow ! 
Go bid him welcome here again, 
From Charon's bark and Pluto's reign ! 

The doleful tale around was spread : 
" Hast heard the news? Poor Apjohn's dead I" — 
" Impossible ! - ' — •' Indeed it 's true — 

He 's dead — and so is Casey too — 

In Limerick this, and that Killaloe. 

As St. Paul says, ' we all must die ! ' 

I 'm sorry for 't," — " Faith so 'm I — 

Extremely so — But tell me, pray, "] 

If you were on the ice to-day ? y 

There was great skating there, they say — " j 

" I could n't go for want of shoes — 

In truth I 'm sorry for the news — 

And yet I knew and always said, 

When he had got into his head 

That strange abstemious resolution, 

'Twould quite destroy his constitution." 

Thus careless, tearless sorrow spoke, 

And heaved the sigh, or told the joke, 

Yet, must I own, there were a few 

Who gave your memory its due ; 



14 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

And while they dropt a friendly tear 

Said things that but you must n't hear. 

And now, methought,. a wandering ghost, 

You whizz'd along the Stygian coast ; 

And if, perchance, you gained the wherry, 

And tugg'd an oar across the ferry, 

That, sitting on the further shore, 

You w^atch'd each boatful wafted o'er, 

While with impatience you attend 

Th' arrival of your quondam friend ; 

To tell his wonder where you 've been, 

And what surprising things you 've seen ; 

And, from experience wise, relate 

The various politics of fate ; 

And show where hoary sages stray, 

And where they chance to keep their way ; 

Then laugh to think, how light as air. 

Our blind dogmatic guesses were ; 

When, fancy throned and placed on high 

We sat in judgment o'er the sky. 

There envy too began to rise. 

To think that you were grown so wise ; 

That bursting from this shell of clay. 

You now enjoy'd eternal day ; 

While I was left perplex'd and blind, 

In anxious ignorance behind ; 

Doom'd this insipid part to play 

In life's dull farce another day, 

That, bent with sorrows and with age, 

I late might totter off the stage : 

But yet my Muse, I cried, will pay, 

The tribute of a weeping lay : 

And though the flowers strewn o'er his tomb 

May boast, perhaps, a longer bloom, 

The short-liv'd verse he '11 still receive, 

Since that is all a Muse can give. 

The Muse, contented, took her place — 

I solemnly composed my face. 

And took the pen, prepared to write 

What she sat ready to indite, 



WIIJ.IAM APJOHN. 15 

When Rmnor, lo! with deafning sound, 

More gladsome tidings blows around, 

And bid.s her thousand tongues to tell, 

That Apjohn is alive and well ! 

And louder now the torrent grows, 

Gathering new murmurs as it flows, 

"When the poor Muse, in sad affright. 

Swift to Parnassus wings her flight ; 

But promised, ere away she fled, 

That when you should indeed be dead, 

She 'd call again, and write a verse. 

To please your friend, and grace your hearse ; 

Unless that I myself ere then 

Should grow fatigued and quit the scene. 

And yet how short a time can live 

Those honors that the Muses give — 

Soon fades the monument away, 

And sculptured marbles soon decay ; 

And every title, now defaced. 

Mix with the dust which once they graced : 

But if we wish a deathless name. 

Let Virtue hand us down to Fame. 

Our honors then may Time defy. 

Since we will have, whene'er we die. 

For epitaph — a life well spent, 

And mankind for a monument. 

What matter then for you and me. 

Though none upon our graves should see 

A W. A. or J. P. C. 



"William Apjohn is a name of which the world has heard 
nothing. He died prematurely, and " without his fame ; " but 
had his days been lengthened, he would probably have acted 
a distinguished part in the history of his country. Like his 
friend, he had chosen the bar as the most honorable road to 
fortune and celebrity, and had already given a promise of such 
talents for public life, that his success was looked to as undoubted. 
Mr. Curran never spoke of his capacity but in terms of the most 



16 '■ LIFE OF CUERAN. 

respectful admiration. " Apjohn's mind," he used to say, "was, 
beyond exception, the most accomplished that I ever met: his 
abilities and attainments were so many and so rare, that if they 
could have been distributed among a dozen ordinary persons, 
the share of each would have promoted him to the rank of a 
man of talents." 



LEAVES COLLEGE. l7 



CHAPTER II. 



Mr. Curran leaves College— Enters the Middle Temple— Letter to Mr. Weston— Letter to 
Mr. Keller — His first attempts in Oratory fail — His own account of the failure, and of 
his first success — A regular attendant at Debating Clubs— Anecdotes — His Poem on 
Friendship — Dr. Creagh's character of him — Mr. Hudson's predictions and friendship — 
His early manners and habits — Subject to constitutional melancholy — Letters from 
London— His society in London — Anecdote of his interview with Macklin— His early 
application and attainments — Favorite authors — Early attachment to the Lish peas- 
antry — His marriage — Remarks upon the English Law. 



Mr. Curran completed his college studies in the early part of 
the year ITYS, having qualified himself to a Master's degree, and 
passed over to London, where he became a student of law in 
the Society of the Middle Temple.* Dm*ing his residence in 
England he Avrote regularly, and at considerable length to his 
friends in Ireland. A collection of these letters has been pre- 
served, and as several of them contain a more striking picture of 
his circumstances, and of many traits of individual character, than 
any description by another could convey, he shall in this stage of 
his life be occasionally made his own biographer. 

The following was written immediately after his arrival in the 
British capital. The gentleman to whom it is addressed was a 
resident of Newmarket, and one of the most attached of Mr. 
Curran's early friends. 



* It is indispensable that every person who seeks admission to the Irish bar, shall 
have " studied " {i. e., eaten a certain number of dinners during two years) at one of the 
Inns of the Court, in London, as well as at the Queen's Inn of law, in Dublin ! — M. 



18 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

"LoxDOX, 31 Chandos-street, July 10, 1773. 
"THE REV. HENRY AVESTON, 

* NEWMARKET, CO. CORK. 

"I would have taken a last farewell of my dear Harry from 
Dublin, if I had not written so shortly before I left it ; and, indeed, 
I was not sorry for being exempt from a task for which a thousand 
causes conspired to make me, at that juncture, unqualified. It was 
not without regret that I could leave a country, which my birth, 
education, and connections had rendered dear to me, and venture 
alone, almost a child of fortune, into a land of strangers. In such 
moments of despondence, when fancy phiys the self-tormentor, she 
commonly acquits herself to a miracle, and v^'ill not ftul to collect 
in a single group the most hideous forms of anticipated misfor- 
tune. I considered myself, besides, as resigning for ever the little 
indulgences that youth and inexperience may claim for their 
errors, and passing a period of life in which the best can scarce 
escape the rigid severity of censure ; nor could the little trivial 
vanity of taking the reins of my own conduct alleviate the pain 
of so dear-bought a transition from dependence to liberty. Full 
of these reflections as I passed the gate, I could not but turn and 
take a last lingering look of poor Alraa-mater ; it was the scene 
of many a boyish folly, and of many a happy hour. I should 
have felt more confusion at a part of the retrospect, had I not 
been relieved by a recollection of the valuable friendship I had 
formed there. Thouo^li I am far from thinkino- such a circumx- 
stance can justify a passed misconduct, yet I cannot call that time 
totally a blank, in which one has acquired the greatest blessing of 
humanity. It was with a melancholy kind of exultation I counted 
over the number of those I loved there, while my heart gave a 
sigh to each name in tlie catalogue; nay, even \\iq fellows^ whom 
I never loved, I forgave at that moment ; the parting tear blotted 
out every injury, and I gave them as hearty a benediction as if 
they had deserved it : as for my general acquaintance (for I could 



LETTER TO MH. WESTON. 19 

not but go the round), I packed their respective little sighs into 
one great sigh, as I turned round on my heel. My old friend and 
handmaid Betty, perceiving me in motion, got her hip under the 
strong box with my seven shirts, which she had rested against the 
rails during the delay, and screwed up her fece into a most rueful 
caricature, that might provoke a laugh at another time ; while her 
young son Denny, grasping his waistband in one hand, and a 
basket of sea-provision in the other, took the lead in the proces- 
sion ; and so we journeyed on to George's Quay,* where the ship 
was just ready to sail. When I entered, I found my fellow-pas- 
seno-ers seated round a laro-e table in the cabin : we Avere fourteen 
in number. A young Highland lord had taken the head of the 
table and the conversation, and, with a modesty peculiar to him- 
self, gave a history of his travels, and his intimate connections 
with the princes of the empire. An old debauched officer w^as 
complaining of the gout, while a woman, who sat next to him 
(good heaven ! what a tongue), gave a long detail of what her 
father suffered from that disorder. To do them all justice, they 
exerted themselves most zealously for the common entertainment. 
As for my part, I had nothing to say ; nor, if I l^id, was any one 
at leisure to listen to me ; so I took possession of what the captain 
called a bed, wondering with Partridge, ' how they could play so 
many different tunes at the same time without putting each other 
out.' I was expecting that the sea-sickness would soon give those 
restless mouths different employment, but in that I was disap- 
pointed ; the sea was so calm that one only was sick during the 
passage, and it was not my good fortune that the lot should fall 
on that devil who never ceased chattering. There was no cure 
but patience; accordingly, I never stirred from my tabernacle 
(unless to visit my basket) till we arrived at Parkgate.f Here, 
after the usual pillage at the custom-house, I laid my box down 



* In Cork.— M. 

t Parkgate, in Cheshire, was the usual port of debarcation, for Irish voyagers to Eng- 
land, in the last century. — M. 



ZU LIFE OF CUERAN. 

on the beacli, seated myself upon it, and, casting my eyes west- 
ward over the Welsh mountains towards Ireland, I began to 
reflect on the impossibility of getting back without the precarious 
assistance of others. Poor Jack ! thought I, thou wert never till 
now so far from home but thou mightest return on thine own legs. 
Here now must thou remain, for where here canst thou expect the 
assistance of a friend ? Whimsical as the idea was, it had power 
to affect me ; until, at length, I was awakened from this reverie 
by a figure which approached me with the utmost aftability ; 
methought his looks seemed to say, ' Why is thy spirit troubled V 
He pressed me to go into his house, and to ' eat of his bread,' and 
to ' drink of his drink.' There was so much good-natured solici- 
tude in the invitation, 'twas irresistible. I arose, therefore, and 
followed him, ashamed of my uncharitable despondence. Surely, 
thought I, ' there is still humanity left among us,' as I raised my 
eyes to the golden letters over his door, that oifered entertainment 
and repose to the wearied traveller. Here I resolved to stay for 
the night, and agreed for a place in his coach, next morning, to 
Chester ; but, finding my loquacious fellow-passenger had agreed 
for one in the same vehicle, I retracted my bargain, and agreed 
for my box only. I perceived, however, when I arose next morn- 
ing, that my box was not sent, though the coach was gone. I was 
thinking how I should remedy this unlucky disappointment, when 
my friendly host told me that he could furnish me with a chaise ! 
Confusion light upon him ! what a stroke was this ! It was not 
the few paltry shillings that vexed me, but to have my philan- 
thropy till that moment running cheerily through my veins, and 
to have the current turned back suddenly by the detection of his 
knavery ! Verily, Yorick, even thy gentle spirit, so meekly accus- 
tomed to bear and forbear, would have been roused on such an 
occasion. I paid hastily for my entertainment, and, shaking the 
dust from my feet at his gate, I marched with my box on my 
shoulder to a waggoner's at the other end of the town, where I 
entered it for London, and sallied forth towards Chester on foot. 



LETTER TO MR. WESTOX. 21 

I was so nettled at being the dupe of my own credulity, that I was 
almost tempted to pass an excommunication on all mankind, and 
resolved never more to trust my own skill in physiognomy. 
Wrapt up in my speculations, I never perceived at what a rate I 
was striding away, till I found myself in the suburbs of Chester, 
quite out of breath, and completely covered with dust and dirt. 
From Chester, I set out that evening in the stage : I slept about 
four hours next day at Coventry, and the following evening, at 
five o'clock, was in view of near a hundred and twenty spires, that 
are scattered from one side of the horizon to the other, and seem 
almost bewildered in the mist that perpetually covers this prodi- 
gious capital. 'T would be impossible for description to give any 
idea of the various objects that fill a stranger, on his first arrival, 
with surprise and astonishment. The magnificence of the churches, 
hospitals, and other public building, which everywhere present 
themselves, would alone be ample subject of admiration to a spec- 
tator, though he were not distracted by the gaudy display of 
wealth and dissipation continually shifting before his eyes in the 
most extravagant forms of pride and ostentation, or by a hurry of 
business that might make you think this tlie source from which 
life and motion are conveyed to the world beside. There are 
many places here not unworthy of particular inspection ; but as 
my illness prevented me from seeing them on my first arrival, I 
shall suspend my curiosity till som.e future time, as I am deter- 
mined to apply to reading this vacation with the utmost diligence, 
in order to attend the Courts next winter with more advantage. 
If I should happen to visit Ireland next summer, I shall spend a 
week, before I go, in seeing the curiosities here (the king and 
queen, and the Hons) ; and, if I continue in my present mood, you 
will see a strange alteration in your poor friend. That cursed fever 
ever brought me down so much, and my spirits are so reduced, 
that, faith, I don't remember to have laughed these six weeks. 
Indeed, I never thought solitude could lean so heavily on me as I 
find it does : I rise, most commonly, in the morning between five 



22 LIFE OF CURE AX. 

and six, and read as much as my eyes will permit me till dinner- 
time ; I then go out and dine, and from that till bed-time, I mope 
about between my lodgings and the Park. For heaven's sake, 
send me some news or other (for, surely, Newmarket cannot be 
barren in such things) that will teach me once more to laugh. I 
never received a single line from any one since I came here ! Tell 
me if you know anything about Keller ; I wrote twice to that 
gentleman without being favored with any answer. You will give 
my best respects to Mrs. Aldworth and her family; to Doctor 
Creagh's ; and do n't forget my good friends Peter and Will 

Connel. 

" Yours sincerely, 

"J. P. C. 

" P.S. — I will cover this blank edge with intreating you to write 
closer than you commonly do when you sit down to answer this, 
and don't make me pay tenpence for a halfpenny-worth of white 
paper." 

[Curran's correspondence with Mr. Weston was collected and 
published in 1819, but is only slightly known. It extends over 
only a year and a half (17*73-4), when Curran was yet very young, 
but contains some passages too characteristic not to be added to 
this life of him. Here is a lively bit of description : 

'- No doubt Keller has informed you of Schoole's exploit In the matri- 
monial way, with the daughter of the widow Craigan iu Limerick. It 
seems the whole posse comitatus was hunting the fugitives for three or 
four days ; but Schoole made a valiant running fight of it, and has the 
dear creature here in London. I have the honor of being introduced as a 
particular friend of Mr. Schoole's, though I fancy the desire of showing 
me the prize was the chief ground of the particularity. She is a curious 
little puppet, smart and chattering, and looks upon her good man as 
an oracle of taste and erudition. By her means I have got acquainted 
with a Miss Hume, who is also an original in her way. She is a relation 
of the celebrated David Hume ; and, I suppose, on the strength of the 
kindred, sets up for a politician as well as a sceptic ; she has heard his 



THE IRISH CHAKACTEK. 23 

Essays recommended, and shews her own discernment by pronouncing 
them unanswerable ; and talks of the famous Burke, by the familiar 
appellation of Ned. Then she is so romantic and so sentimental — nothing 
for her but grots, and purling streams, and piping shepherds ; and to 
crown all, it sings like a nightingale. As I have not the best command 
of my muscles, I always propose putting out the candles, before the song 
begins, for the greater romanticality of the thing. This is an expedient 
I used to have recourse to in the college, when I had the honor of teach- 
ing Nixon to sing. 'T is a miserable thing when a poor girl is so mis- 
taken in her qualifications, as to display only her absurdities, and stu- 
diously conceal everything that she ought not to be ashamed of. Even 
this being wants not common sense, if she would but use it. But what 
have you or I to do with the text or comment?'' 

Here, after an unfavorable character of the English hoor^ is Ciir- 
ran's panegyric on his own countrymen : 

•' Their fondness for genealogy, so much despised here, and not without 
reason, yet gives them an advantage they could derive from no other 
source. When each poor individual is supposed to contain in his own 
person the accumulated honors of many generations, they are led to treat 
each other with a politeness and respect proportioned to this imaginary 
merit, and to cultivate a friendly intercourse that contributes not a little 
to reclaim, and even to refine the sentiments of the illiterate ; and I have 
often thought, their manner of lamenting over their dead, co-operates 
strongly to preserve and improve this untutored sort of politeness, by 
keeping alive something like a taste for composition in a language, that 
wants neither expression nor extent, and by preventing that language 
from a decay, into which it must otherwise have fallen : and to these you 
add the severe political grievances, and the still more cruel miserable 
Inducement to a strict association, the community of aflGiction and 
wretchedness, more than can be found in either France or Germany, 
and yet fostered in the bosom of a constitution boasted to be free. You 
will smile, no doubt, at these observations as being unseasonable as well 
as exaggerated. To the first I must plead guilty : but for the latter, 
there certainly is some truth in it ; would to Heaven there was not so 
much !" 

There is life, spirit and vivacity in this account of his visit to 



24: . LIFE OF CURRAN. 

Hampton Court, one of the Royal Palaces near London, to whicli 
the public at large, as its true proprietors, have free admission now : 

'' The servant who showed us the apartments, which were very splen- 
did, gave us a circumstantial detail of the pictures, and the judgments 
passed upon them by different connoisseurs : he seemed to be a good deal 
pleased with his manner of explaining a suite of tapestry, representing 
the Persian war of Alexander : though a simple fellow, he had his lesson 
well by rote, and ran over the battles of Issus and Arbela, &c., with a 
surprising flippancy. ' But where is Alexander ?' cries Apjohn. ' There 
sir, at the door of Darius's tent, with the ladies at his feet.' ' Surely^' 
said I, * that must be Hephestion, for he was mistaken by the Queen for 
Alexander.' ' Pardon me, sir : I hope I know Alexander better than 
that ;' and he shook his head in confirmation of his opinion, while I paid 
myself the same compliment. ' But which of the two do you really think 
the greater man ?' ' Greater ! Bless your soul, sir, they are both dead 
this hundred years.' Harry ! what a comment on human vanity ! By 
my soul, there was the marrow of a thousand folios in the answer. I 
could not help thinking, at the instant, what a puzzle that mighty man 
would be in, should he appear before a committee from the Temple of 
Fame, to claim those laurels he thought so much of, and be opposed in 
his demand, though his competitors were Thersites, or the fellow who 
rubbed Bucephalus's heels. How would his identity be ascertained ? 
Chaerilus, stand forth ; but should Masvius contest the bays with Chaerilus, 
would a million of critics decide the difference ? What then must be the 
sentence ? Why, since the conqueror cannot be distinguished from the 
slave, let the chaplet be divided between them, et curru servus portetur 
eodem. Thus, in a few years, may my dear Harry be a Tillotson, and his 
friend as much Cicero as Cicero himself." 

The following extract shows how Curran spent his time in London. 
What a happy kind of life, what a blessed flashing of mirth and 
meditation — sport and study — fun and philosophy — purl and poli- 
tics — shaded, as it must have been, with the constitutional melan- 
choly which pressed on him through life, and at length wrapped 
his mind in the darkest folds of despondency and hopelessness, 
such a way of living must have had charms for one who liked 
variety, and could accommodate himself to all phases of society. 



EARLY CORRESPONDENCE. 25 

"I happened at first to be rather unlucky in my lodgings; I was not 
aware of their being situated exactly under the bells of St. Martin, and 
that I was to be eternally stunned with the noise of praying bells, rejoin- 
ing bells, and passing bells. I had the additional ineonveuience of being 
exposed to the conversation of a man, no ways agreeable to me, a dull, 
good-natured, generous, unexperienced, opinionated, deep-read, unlearned, 
disputative sort of a character, still more offensive to me than my other 
neighbour, the steeple ; for I had learned to endure unpleasing sounds, but 
I never had an opportunity of learning to bear with a troublesome com- 
panion. So I changed my tabernacle not a little to my satisfaction 
Besides being disengaged from the nuisances that infected me before, I 
have procured much better accommodations, on more reasonable terms. 
For the future, you will direct to me, No. 9 Orange Street, Leicester 
Fields. 

" Notwithstanding a fit of illness, which somewhat retarded my applica- 
tion in the beginning, I have exerted a degree of assiduity, of which I 
once thought myself incapable. For the first five months I was almost 
totally a recluse, indeed, too much so. When we seclude ourselves entirely 
from all intercourse with the world, our affections will soon grow impa- 
tient of the restraint, and strongly convince us that much of our happi 
ness must be drawn from society ; and if we exert too much rigour, how- 
ever philosophical it may appear at the time, to suppress these struggles, 
the temper is apt to fall into a gloomy kind of apathy. This I found to 
be my case, and I accordingly resolved to soften the severity of the dis- 
cipline I had overzealously adopted, and to that end made some additions 
to my wardrobe, and purchased a fiddle, which I had till then denied 
myself. Do not think, however, from my mentioning those indulgences, 
that I have diminished my hours of reading ; all I have done by the 
change is, employing the time that must otherwise be vacant, in amuse- 
ment instead of solitude, I still continue to read ten hours every day, 
seven at law, and three at history, or the general principles of politics ; 
and that I may have time enough, I rise at half after four. I have con- 
trived a machine after the manner of an hour-glass, which, perhaps, you 
may be curious to know, which wakens me regularly at that hour. Exactly 
over my head I have suspended two vessels of tin, one above the other ; 
when I go to bed, which is always at ten, I pour a bottle of water into 
the upper vessel, in the bottom of which is a hole of such a size, as to let 
the water pass through, so as to make the inferior reservoir overflow in 
six hours and a half. I have had no small trouble in proportioning those 

9 



26 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 

vessels ; aud I was still more puzzled for a while bow to couQne my head, 
BO as to receive the drop, but I have at length succeeded. 

'• You will, perhaps, be at some loss to guess what kind of amusement 
I allow myself : why, I'll tell you. I spend a couple of hours every night 
at a coffee-house, where I am not a little entertained with a group of old 
politicians, who meet in order to debate on the reports of the day, or to 
invent some for the next, with the other business of the nation. Though 
I don't know that sociability is the characteristic of this people, yet poli- 
tics is a certain introduction to the closest intimacy of coffee-house 
acquaintance. One meets with a great deal of amusement from this sort 
of conversation, and I think it can scarcely be devoid of improvement. 
Six or seven old fellows who have spent the early part of their lives in a 
variety of adventures, and are united at last by no other principle than a 
common vacancy, which makes it necessary for them to fill up their time 
by meddling in other people's business, since they have none of their own, 
is certainly a miscellany not unworthy a perusal ; it gives a facility at 
least of discerning characters, and what is no less useful, enures us to a 
toleration that must make our passage through life more easy. I also 
visit a variety of ordinaries aud eating-houses, and they are equally fer- 
tile in game for a character-hunter. I think I have found out the cellar 
where Roderick Random ate shin of beef for three-pence, and actually 
drank out of the identical quart, which the drummer squeezed together 
when poor Strap spilt the broth on his legs.'' 

From the last letter in this collection I qnote a passage, a little too 
formal, perhaps, for the off-hand style of friendly letters, but show- 
ing vigour of thought, feeling and expression : 

*'My not writing to you since I came to England, proceeding wholly 
from a scarcity of any thing worth communicating, I might justify a 
continuance of silence from the same cause. But yet I know not well 
how it happens, there is something in the first day of the new year that 
seems peculiarly to demand the tribute of remembrance : I could not let 
it pass without apprizing you that I am still in the land of the living : 
^'vivo eguidem." These anniversary days serve as light-houses on the 
great ocean of time, by which we direct and compute our courses. They 
alarm us to a momentary recollection of the tempests we have weathered, 



EAELY CORRESPONDENCE. 27 

the quicksands we have escaped, or the fortunate gales we have enjoyed. 
If any of the stars of heaven have shone with propitious influence, we 
adore them for their benevolent regards, and endeavour to engage their 
superintendence for the remainder of our voyage. 
'' As Young says — 

' We take no heed of time but by its loss ;' 

the moments slide unperceived away, we think it still in our possession, still 
in being, till the knell of our departed hours startles us into a perception of 
its decease. These returning periods are not then without their advantage. 
They admonish us, at least, to dedicate one day in the year to a little reflec- 
tion. The incidents of our life crowd in upon our thoughts, the pleasures 
we have found, the anxious moments we have spent — and Reason, elated 
with the temporary submission of her authority, makes a merit of passing 
an impartial sentence, and of changing, for an instant, from the venal 
advocate to the upright judge of our passions or our follies. Then, too, 
the heart counts over its attachments ; and if Fate has blotted out any 
name of the catalogue, we fix our expectation with a more anxious solici- 
tude on the survivors. When any of our fortresses against the outrages 
of fortune have sunk into ruin, we are doubly bound to attend to the pre- 
servation of those that remain, lest we should be found totally defence- 
less in the day of danger. 

" Thus have I in some sort accounted for my troubling you with a let- 
ter at this particular time, as well as for the melancholy mood in which 
I sit down to write : in truth I do not remember to have been much more 
dejected. To you, my dear Harry, I hope this merry season has been 
more favourable. And yet, situated as you are, you can scarcely avoid 
sometimes feeling the heaviness of time, especially now v.'hen Newmarket 
has lost so many who might contribute to enliven it. As for my part, 
you can neither envy nor congratulate my situation with half the reason 
that I may yours. I once thought that solitude amidst thousands was no 
better than a paradox ; but now I find it effectually verified. It is, 
indeed, the most dreary of all solitudes to walk abroad amongst millions, 
to read the most legible of all characters, those written by fortune or 
affliction, in every face you meet ; to feel your heart elated or depressed 
by every story, and with the most disinterested solicitude, acknowledging 
the object for its fellow-creature ; to have all these exquisitely respond- 
ent sympathies for which nature has so finely formed the bosoms of her 
children, unobserved and unavailing, * * * *] 



28 LIFE OF CUEEAN. 

In a letter of nearly the same date, to another friend,* he says : 
" By the time you receive this I shall have relapsed into the 
same monastic life that I led before. I do not expect, however, 
that it will lean so heavily on me, as I am now tolerably recov- 
ered, and shall continue to read with unabated application; 
indeed, that is the only means of making solitude supportable ; 
yet, it must be owned, a man of speculative turn will find ample 
matter in that way without stirring fi-om his window. It is here 
that every vice and folly climb to their meridian, and that mor- 
tality seems properly to understand her business. If you cast your 
eyes on the thousand gilded chariots that are dancing the hayes 
in an eternal round of foppery, you would think the world 
assembled to play the fool in London, unless you believe the 
report of the passing bells and hearses, which would seem to inti- 
mate that they all made a point of dying here. It is amazing, 
that even custom should make death a matter of so much uncon- 
cern as you will here find it. Even in the house where I lodge, 
there has been a being dead these two days. I did not hear a 
Avord of it till this evening, though he is divided from me only by 
a partition. They \isit him once a day, and so lock him up till 
the next (for they seldom bury till the seventh day), and there 
he lies without the smallest attention paid to him, except a dirge 
each night on the Jew's-harp, which I sliall not omit while he con- 
tinues to be my neighbour." 

It was during his attendance at the Temple that Mr. Curran 
made the first trial of his rhetorical powers. He frequented a 
debating society that was composed of his fellow-students. His 
first attempt was unsuccessful, and for the moment quite dis- 
heartened him. He had had from his boyhood a considerable 
precipitation and confusion of utterance, fi-om which he was 
denominated by his school-fellows "stuttering Jack Curran." 
This defect he had labored to remove, but the cure was not yet 

* Jeremiah Keller, Esq., a member of the Irish bar.~C. 



BURSTING THE SHELL. 29 

complete. From the agitation of a first effort lie was unable to 
pronounce a syllable ; and so little promise did there appear of 
his shining as a speaker, that his friend Apjohn said to him, "I 
have a high opinion of your capacity ; confine yourself to the 
study of law, and you will, to a certainty, become an eminent 
chamber counsel ; but, depend upon it, nature never intended you 
for an orator." Fortunately for his fame, this advice was disre- 
garded: he continued to attend the above and other debating 
clubs, at one of which, during a discussion, some personal and 
irritating expressions having been levelled at him, his indignation, 
and along with it his talent, was roused. Forgetting all his 
timidity and hesitation, he rose against his assailants, and, for the 
first time, revealed to his hearers and to himself that style of 
original and impetuous oratory, which he afterwards improved 
into such perfection, and which now bids fair to preserve his 
name. He used often to entertain his friends, by detailing this 
event of his mind's having " burst the shell." The following 
was the manner in which he once related it; for one of the 
great charms of his colloquial powers was the novelty that he 
could give to the same flicts upon every repetition : he adorned a 
favorite anecdote, as a skilful nmsician would a favorite air, by an 
endless variety of unpremeditated ad libitum graces. 

One day after dinner, an acquaintance, in speaking of his 
eloquence, happened to observe that it must have been born 
with him. " Indeed, my dear sir," replied Mr. Curran, " it w^as 
not ; it was born three and twenty years and some months after 
me ; and, if you are satisfied to listen to a dull historian, you 
shall have the history of its nativity. 

" When I was at the Temple, a few of us formed a little debat- 
ing club — poor Apjohn, and Duhigg,"^ and the rest of them! 
they have all disappeared from the stage ; but my own busy hour 
will soon be fretted through, and then w^e may meet again behind 
the scenes. Poor fellows ! they are now at rest ; but I still can 

* The late B. T. Duhigg, Esq., of the Irish Bar.— C. 



30 LIFE OF CUREAIT. 

see tliem, and tlie glow of lionest bustle on their looks, as they 
arranged, their little plan of honourable association (or, as Pope 
would say, 'gave their little senate laws'), where all the great 
questions in ethics and politics (there were no gagging-bills in 
those days) were to be discussed and irrevocably settled. Upon 
the first night of our assembling, I attended, my foolish heart 
throbbing with the anticipated honour of being styled ' the learned 
member that opened the debate,' or ' the very eloquent gentle- 
man who has just sat down.' All day the coming scene had 
been ilitting before my fancy, and cajoling it ; my ear already 
caught the glorious melody of 'hear him, hear him!' Already I 
was practising how to steal a cunning side-long glance at the 
tear of generous approbation bubbling in the eyes of my Kttle 
auditory ; never suspecting, alas ! that a modern eye may have so 
little aflinity with moisture that the finest gunpowder may bo 
dried upon it. I stood up — the question was Catholic claims or 
the slave trade, I protest I now forget which, but the diff"erence, 
you know, was never very obvious — my mind was stored with 
about a folio volume of matter, but I wanted a preface, and for 
want of a preface the volume was never jiublished. I stood up, 
trembling through every fibre ; but remembering that in tliis I 
was but imitating Tally, I took courage, and had actually pro- 
ceeded almost as far as ' Mr. Chairman,' when to my astonish- 
ment and terror, I perceived that every eye was riveted upon me. 
There were only six or seven prcvsent, and the little room could 
not have contained as many more; yet was it, to my panic- 
struck imagination, as if I were the central object in nature, and 
assembled millions were gazing upon me in breathless expecta- 
tion. I became dismayed and dumb; my friends cried 'hear 
him!' but there was nothing to hear. My lips, indeed, went 
through the pantomime of articulation, but I was like the unfor- 
timate fiddler at the fair, who, upon coming to strike up the solo 
that was to ravish every ear, discovered that an enemy had mali- 
ciously soaped his bow ; or rather Hke poor Punch as I once saw 



THE DEBATING CLUB. 31 

him (and how many like him have I seen in our old House of 
Commons ! but it is dead, and let us not disturb its ashes) grimac- 
ing a soliloquy, of which his prompter behind had most indis- 
creetly neglected to administer the words. So you see, sir, it 
was not born with me. However, though my friends, even 
Apjohn, the most sanguine of them, despaired of me, the cacoethes 
loquendi was not to be subdued without a struggle. I was for 
the present silenced, but I still attended our meetings with the 
most laudable regularity, and even ventured to accompany the 
'others to a more ambitious theatre, 'the Devils of Temple Bar;' 
where truly may I say, that many a time the Devil's own work 
was going forward. Here, warned by fatal experience that a 
man's powers may be overstrained, I at first confined myself to a 
simple ' ay or no,' and by dint of practice and encouragement, 
brought my tongue to recite these magical elements of parlia- 
mentary eloquence with ' such sound emphasis and good discre- 
tion,' that in a fortnight's time I had completed my education for 
the Irish senate. 

" Such was my state, the popular throb just beginning to 
revisit my heart, when a long expected remittance arrived from 
Newmarket ; Apjohn dined with me that day, and when the leg 
of mutton, or rather the bone, was removed, we offered up the 
libation of an additional glass of punch for the health and length 
of days (and heaven heard the prayer) of the kind mother that 
had remembered the necessities of her absent child. In the 
evening we had repaired to ' the Devils.' One of them v/as upon 
his legs ; a fellow of whom it was impossible to decide, whether 
he was most distinguished by the filth of his person or by the 
flippancy of his tongue ; just such another as Harry Flood 
would have called ' the highly gifted gentleman with the dirty 
cravat and greasy pantaloons.''^ I found this learned personage 

* Mr. Curran here alluded to the celebrated Mr. Flood's custom of distinguishing the 
speakers at the London Debating Societies by such ludicrous descriptions of their dress, 
as " the eloquent friend to reform in the threadbare coat," " the able supporter of the 
present ministry with the new pair of boots," &c. — C. 



32 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

in the act of calumniating chronology by the most preposterous 
anachronisms (and as I believe, I shortly after told him) traduc- 
ing the illustrious dead by affecting a confidential intercourse 
with them, as he would with some nobleman, his very dear friend^ 
behind his back, who, if present, would indignantly repel the 
imputation of so insulting an intimacy. He descanted upon 
Demosthenius, the glory of the Roman forum ; sj^oke of Tully as 
the famous cotemporary and rival of Cicero ; and in the short 
space of one half hour, transported the straits of Marathon three 
several times to the plains of Thermopyloe. Thinking that I 
had a right to know something of these matters, I looked at him 
with surprise ; and whether it was the money in my pocket, or 
my classical chivalry, or most probably the supplemental tumbler 
of punch, that gave my face a smirk of saucy confidence, when 
our eyes met, there was something like wager of battle in mine ; 
upon which the erudite gentleman instantly changed his invec- 
tives against antiquity into an invective against me, and con- 
cluded by a few words of friendly counsel (hoj-resco referens) to 
' Orator Mum,' who he doubted not possessed wonderful talents 
for eloquence, although he would recommend him to show it in 
future by some more popular method than his silence. I followed 
his advice, and I believe not entirely without eSect ; for when 
sitting down, I whimpered my friend, that I hoped he did not 
think that my dirty antagonist had come ' quite clean off?' ' On 
the contrary, my dear fellow,' said he, ' every one around me is 
declaring that it is the first time they ever saw him so well 
dressed.' So, sir, you see that to try the bird, the spur 
must touch his blood. Yet, after all, if it had not been for the 
inspiration of the punch, I might have continued a mute to this 
hour ; so for the honor of the art, let ns have another glass." 

The speech which Mr. Curran made upon this occasion was 
immediately followed by a more substantial reward than the 
applauses of his hearers ; the debate was no sooner closed than 
the president of the society dispatched his secretary to the eloquent 



THE ROBIN HOOD. 33 

stranger, to solicit the honor of his company to partake of a cold 
collation, which proved to consist of bread and cheese and por- 
ter; but the piibHc motives of the invitation rendered it to the 
guest the most delicious supper that he had ever tasted. 

From this time till his final departure from London, Le was a 
regular attendant and speaker at debating clubs ; an exercise 
which he always strongly recommended to every student of elo- 
quence, and to which he attributed much of his own skill and 
facility in extemporaneous debate. He never adopted or approved 
of the practice of committing to memory intended speeches, but 
he was 'in the habit of assisting his mind with ample notes of the 
leading topics, and trusted to the occasion for expression. 

The society that he latterly most frequented was the well-known 
Robin Hood. He also sometimes attended a meeting for the dis- 
cussion of religious questions, which was held on Sunday evenings 
at the Brown Bear in the Strand, and resorted to by persons of 
every persuasion, and by many who were honorary members of 
all faiths. Whenever the claims of the Roman Catholics were 
the subject of debate, he uniformly supported them. From his 
zeal in their cause, and from his dress (a brown surtout over 
black), he was supposed by strangers to be a young priest of that 
Order, and was known in the club by the name of " the little Jesuit 
from St. Omers.'"'^ 

Among Mr. Curran's juvenile productions was a poem of some 
length, written while he v/as at the Temple ; it is entitled, " On 
Friendship," and addressed to Mr. Weston, of Newmarket. When 
we consider the character of Mr. Curran's oratory, to which an 

* The same zeal foi- the emancipation of the Roman Catliolics which distinguished him 
for the rest of his life, produced similar mistakes among strangers upon the subject of his 
religion. When he was at Paris, in 1S14, he accompanied some friends to see Cardinal 
Fesch's gallery of paintings. The Frenchman in attendance there was a good deal 
struck by Mr. Curran's observations, and, upon the latter's retiring before the others, 
asked, with some curiosity, who he was. As soon as he heard his name, "Ah !" said he, 
with great surprise, "je Yoyois bien qu'il avoit beaucoup d'esprit, mais, mon Dicu ! je 
n'aurois jamais Boupconne que ce petit monsieur fut le grand Catholique Irlan- 
dou."~C. 

2* 



34: LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

excess of fervor and imagination lias been by some imputed as 
its imperfection, we sliould naturally expect to see those qualities 
predominating when he found himself engaged in subjects to 
which they so peculiarly belong ; but this is not the case. From 
his youth to his old age, he was fond of writing poetry, and pro- 
duced a considerable quantity; but in little of it do we meet with 
that sustained ardour, Avith those fearless conceptions, and that 
diction teeming with im.agery, which distinguish his other produc- 
tions. When he occupied himself with poetry, he appears to have 
considered it rather as a recreation to soothe himself, than as a 
means of exciting others. With the exception of a very few 
instances (which, however, prove his poetic capacity, had he anxi- 
ously cultivated it), his verses are, in general, placid, familiar, and 
unaspiring, seldom venturing beyond expressions of established 
form, and, for the most part, contented with those sentiments 
of obdous tenderness to which no mind of any sensibility is a 
stranger. The opening of the poem on Friendship is here inserted, 
for the sake of the concluding image, which the late Mr. Fox 
(among others) particularly admired. 

Here, on these banks, where many a bard has sung. 
While Thames, in listening silence, fiow'd along, 
Where friendship's flame inspir'd the glowing verse, 
To hail the triumph, or to mourn the hearse ; 
On the same spot where weeping Thompson paid - 
The last sad tribute to his Talbot's shade, 
A humbler muse, by fond remembrance led, 
Bewails the absent, where he mourned the dead. 
Nor differ much the subjects of the strain, 
"Whether of death or distance we complain ; 
Vfhether we're sundered by the final scene, 
Or envious seas disjoining roll between ; 
Absence, the dire effect, is still the same, 
And death and distance differ but in name : 
Yet sure they're different, if the peaceful grave 
From haunting thoughts the low-laid tenant save, 



EAKLY POETEY. 35 

While in this breathing death reflection lives, 

And o'er the wreck of happiness survives. 

Alas ! my friend, were Providence inclined 

(In unrelenting wrath to human kind) 

To take back every blessing that she gave, 

From the wide ruin, she would memory save, 

Else would severest ills be soon o'erpast, 

Or kind oblivion bury them at last : 

But Memory, with more than Egypt-s art, 

Embalming every grief that wounds the heart. 

Sits at the altar she hath rais'd to Wo, 

And feeds the source lohence tears for ever flow. 

In the course of this poem, allusions are made to the writer's 
future career in public life ; and those who have not yet learned 
to sneer at the mention of political integrity, will be gratified to 
observe how completely, in the present instance, the visions of the 
poet w^ere realized by the subsequent conduct of the man. 

But in his country's cause, if patriot zeal 

Excite him, ardent for the public weal. 

With generous warmth to stem corruption's rage, 

And prop the fall of an abandon'd age, 

Bold in the senate, he confronts the band 

Of willing slaves that sell their native land ; 

And, when the mitred hireling would persuade 

That chains for man by Heaven's high will were made. 

Or hoary jurist, in perversion wise. 

Would sap the laws, and on their ruin rise, 

While the mute 'squire and star-enamour 'd beau 

Are base in all they can — an "ay " or '' no!" 

With equal scorn he views the venal train, 

And sordid bribe that such a tribe can gain. 

And a httle further on : 

But if oppression lord it o'er the land, 

And force alone can lawless force withstand. 



36 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

Fearless lie follows where bis country calls, 
And lives with freedom, or with glory falls ; 
He gives that shackle he disdains to v/ear, 
For endless fame, nor thinks the purchase dear. 

This may not be very good poetry, Lut it evinces, what is more 
honorable to the writer, and what was in those days of more value 
to Ireland than good poetry, an indignant sense of her condition, 
and an impatience to redress it. It will hereafter appear how far 
he fulfilled the engagements of his youth. 

From the above and similar productions,'^ and from the indica- 
tions of talent that his ordinary conversation afforded, great hopes 
were now entertained of him. According to all the accounts of 
those who knew him at this time, his colloquial powers were even 
then of a very high order. Having no hereditary fortune or 
powerful connections on which to depend, and having embraced 
an ambitious and hazardous profession, where, without the reputa- 
tion of superior ability, there was little prospect of success, he 
appears to have habitually exerted himself upon every occasion to 
substantiate his claims, and justify his choice. The following 
judgment was passed upon him, at this period, by his future 
father-in-law, Dr. Richard Creagh, of Newmarket, a scholar and a 
man of cultivated taste, whose prediction, in the present instance, 
has been so completely verified. After mentioning, in one of his 
letters, the future ornament of the Irish bar, as " a young man of 
this town, one Jack Curran," he proceeds, "take his character 
from me. He possesses a good understanding; is an excellent 
scholar; has some taste, and, for his years, I think, a tolerable 
judgment ; has uncommon abilities ; is a proficient in music ; has 
received an university education ; is now preparing for the bar, for 

* During the two years that preceded his admission to the bar, he wrote, besides the 
poem of " Friendsliip," "Lines upon visiting the Cave of Pope," and "Lines upon the 
poisoning a stream at Frenchay " (where he had been driven by foul winds, in one of 
his passages from England to Ireland), which he composed for the purpose of expressing 
his gratitude to a family of that place, who had given him a very hospitable recep- 
tion.— C. 



HIS EAKLY FRIENDS. 37 

whicli profession lie possesses extraordinary talents, and will disap- 
point all liis friends if lie does not distinguish himself there. As 
far as I can observe, he seems to be extremely cheerful and good- 
natured, and is remarkable pleasant in conversation.'"^ 

In a letter of about the same date from one of Mr. Curran's 
earliest friends, Mr. IIudson,f we find similar expectations prevail ; 
alluding to the melancholy that ran through a letter he had just 
received from the other, he says — " Consider, now and then. Jack, 
what you are destined for ; and never, even in your distresses, draw 
consolation from so mean a thought, as that your abilities may one 
day render your circumstances easy or affluent ; but that you may 
one day have it in your power to do justice to the wronged, to 
wipe the tear from the widow or orphan, Avill alford the satisfac- 
tion that is Avorthy of a man." 

It would be injustice to suppress another passage. Having a 
little before chided his friend for neglecting to inform him of the 
state of his finances, Mr. Hudson goes on, " I think I shall be a 
man of no small fiime to-morrow or next day, and though 'tis but 

* Doctor Ci'eagh waa a physician, anil a member of a very respectable family of that 
name in the county of Cork. Much of tlie earlier part of his life had been passed on the 
Continent, where he had mixed in the society of the most celebrated men of talent ; but 
he used often to declare that, neither abroa.d nor at home, had he ever met so delightful a 
companion as " young Jacli Curran ;" yet, the conversation of tlie latter was not, at this 
time, what it subsequently became. It was full of vivacity and of anecdotes, to which he 
could give an extraordinary degree of dramatic effect ; but it had not, as at a later period, 
those incessant and magical transitions from the most comic trains of thought to the 
deepest pathos, which were for ever bringing a tear to the eye, before the smile was off 
the lip ; nor that surprising control over all the mysteries of language, which he acquired 
by his subsequent habits of extemporaneous speaking. Dr. Creagh was a determined 
•Whig, and had, no doubt, an influence in confirming the political inclinations of his son- 
in-law. It was also from Dr. Creagh, who had spent several years in France, and was an 
excellent French scholar, that Mr. Curran derived much of his early taste for the language 
and literature of that country. — C. 

tMr. Edward Hudson, for a long course of years the most eminent dentist in Ireland. — C. 
He built a beautiful mansion near Dublin, and asked Curran what order of architec- 
ture he should adopt. Gaily smiling at the dentist, the wit replied, " The Task-&n, of 
course." In allusion to this, Hudson was commonly spoken of, familiarly, as The Grand 
Duke of Tusk-any ;" and when his nephew entered the military service of a foreign coun- 
try, Curran said that the young man's first engagement would naturally be the Battle of 
Pul-tusk.— M. 



38 LIFE OF CFEEAN. 

the fame of a dentist, yet if that of an honest man is added to it, 
T shall not be unhappy. Write speedily to me, and if you are in 
want, think I shall not be satisfied with my fortunes — believe mie 
I shall never think I make a better use of my possessions than 
when such a friend as Jack can assist me in their uses." The 
amiable and respectable writer of the above still lives [1819], and 
if the union of the two characters, to which, in his youth, he 
aspired, could confer happiness, he has been completely happy. 

Many other proofs might be added (were it necessary) to show 
that Mr. Curran was, even at this period, considered as much more 
than an ordinary man ; that he had already obtained a very high 
degree of estimation in the opinions of every person of discern- 
ment who knew him. To be regarded as an object of admiration 
and of hope by the immediate circle of his friends, is, indeed, no 
more than happens to every young man of any intellectual jDre- 
tensions; but to Mr. Curran's honour it should not be overlooked, 
that the friends who entertained such sentiments towards him 
were, all of them, those whose zeal and approbation he had won 
for himself by his own character and talents ; nor was a mere 
general respect for the latter the only feeling that united them with 
him — they all appear to have been animated by the most anxious 
and affectionate attachment to his person. Their letters to him 
abound with expressions of more than usual endearment, with 
offers of pecuniary supplies, and many other unequivocal demon- 
strations of the extreme value in which they held him. At this 
period of life he used to pass considerable intervals of time at his 
native village, where he always entered, with the most good- 
natured \dvacity, into all the little .parties and interests of the 
place. He, whose lofty and independent spirit was a few years 
after to bring upon him the charge of " lecturing the Privy Coun- 
cil,"* was in his social intercourse so little fastidious or assuming, 
that he could find abundant amusement amono; the harmless wits 
and politicians of an obscure little town. Nor were these mere 

* An expression of Lord Clare's. The ^hole scene is given hereafter.— C. 



LETTER FROM LOXDOX. 39 

temporary feelings, adopted for convenience, and as evanescent as 
the occasions that excited them — all his impulses were intensely 
social, and, whether present or absent, his heart was still in the 
midst of the friends and companions that he loved. His letters 
fi'om the Temple abound with proofs of these amiable propensi- 
ties ; in none of them is the Newmarket circle omitted ; he dedi- 
cates a portion of every day to thinking of them, and of every 
letter to inquiries after their health and fortunes. Tliis unpretend- 
ing facility of manners, showing how little natural the alliance 
between superiority of intellect and austereness of demeanour, 
continued ever after prominent in his character; and from the 
event we may learn that such cheerful, conciliating, and sympa- 
thising habits are the surest road to lasting friendships. Of these, 
few persons ever enjoyed more — the greater number have gone 
where he has followed — still a few, and among them some of his 
earliest friends, survive ; and it is no less honourable to their con- 
stancy than to his memory, that the same men, who, more than 
forty years ago, were cheering his efforts, and admitting him to 
their affections, are, at this day, with unabated ardour, mourning 
his loss and cherishing his fame. 

The despondency which Mr. Curran's generous correspondent 
has just been seen so anxious to alleviate was not merely casual. 
Notwithstanding the liveliness of his conversation, from which a 
stranger would have supposed that his spirits never knew depres- 
sion, he was all his life subject to visitations of constitutional 
melancholy, which the most ordinary accidents excited and embit- 
tered; even at this early time it may be observed constantly 
breaking out in his communications to his friends. After having 
passed the long vacation of 1774 with his family in Ireland, he 
thus writes to one of them upon his return to London : 

"Apjohn and I arrived in London about eight o'clock on 
Thursday. When I was set down, and threw myself into a box 
in the next coffee-house to me, I think I never felt so strangely in 
mv hfe. The struggle it cost me to leave Ireland, and the pain 



4:0 LIFE OF curaiAX. 

of leaving it as I did, had been hurried into a sort of numbness 
by the exertion of such an effort, and a certain exclusion of 
thought, which is often the consequence of a strong agitation of 
mind: the hurry also of the journey miglit in some measure 
have contributed to soothe for a moment these uneasy sensations. 
But the exertion was now over, the hurry was past ; the barriers 
between me and reflection now gave way, and left me to be over- 
whelmed in the torrent ; all the difficulties I had encountered, 
the happy moments I had lately passed, all now rushed in upon 
my mind, in melancholy succession, and engrossed the pang in 
their turn. 

Revolving in his alter'd soul 

The various turns of chance below, 
And now and then a sigh he stole, 

And tears began- to flow, 

"At length I roused myself from this mournful reverie, and, 
after writing a few words to Newmarket, set out in search of some 
of my old acquaintance. I sought them sorrowing, but there was 
not even one to be found ; they had either changed their abodes 
or were in the country. How trivial a vexation can wound a 
mind that is once depressed ! Even this little disappointment, 
though it was of no consequence, though it could not surprise 
me, yet had the power to afflict me, at least to add to ni}^ other 
mortifications. I could not help being grieved at considering how 
much more important changes may happen even in a shorter 
time ; how the dearest hopes and most favorite projects of the 
heart may flourish, and flatter us with gaudy expectations for a 
moment, and then, suddenly disappearing, leave us to lament over 
our w^-etchedness. and our credulity. Pleased with the novelty 
of the word, we fasten eagerly on the bauble, till satiated with 
enjoyment, or disgusted with disappointment, we resign it with 
contempt. The world, in general, follows our example, and we 
are soon thrown aside, like baubles, in our turn. And yet, dreary 
as the prospect is, it is no small consolation to be attached to, 



TECULIAKITIES OF STYLE. 41 

and to be assured of the attacliment of some worthy affectionate 
souls, where we may find a friendly refuge from the rigours of our 
destiny ; to have even one congenial bosom on which the poor 
afflicted spirit may repose, v/hich will feelingly participate our 
jojs or our sorrows, and with equal readiness catch pleasure from 
our successes, or strive to alleviate the anguish of disappoint- 
ment." 

In another letter, written a few weeks after, the same unfortu- 
nate sensibility is more strikingly exemplified, and more vigor- 
ously expressed. In one passage we clearly recognise the pecu- 
liarities of his subsequent style. 

" I this day left my lodgings ; the people were so very unruly 
that I could stay no longer ; I am now at No. 4, in St. Martin's 
Street, Leicester Fields, not far from my former residence. You 
will perhaps smile at the weakness, yet I must confess it ; never 
did I feel myself so spiritless, so woe-begone, as when I was pre- 
paring for the removal. I had settled myself with an expectation 
of remaining till I should finally depart for Ii-eland ; I was now 
leaving it before that period, and my spirits sunk into a mixture 
of peevishness and despondence at the disappointment. I had 
emptied the desk belonging to the lodgings of my few moveables, 
Avhich I collected in a heap on the floor, and prepared to dispose 
of in my little trunk. Good heavens ! in how many various 
parts, and by how many various ways may the poor human heart 
be wounded ! Is it that even Philosophy cannot so completely 
plunge her children in the waters of wisdom, that an heel, at least, 
will not be left vulnerable, and exposed to the danger of an 
arrow ? Is the fable equally applicable to the mind as to the 
body ? And is all our firmness and intrepidity founded ulti- 
mately on our weakness and our foibles ? May all our giant for- 
titude be so lulled into slumber, as, ere it awakes, to be chained to 
the ground by a few Lilliputian grievances, and held immoveably 
by such slender fetters ? Why else shall we be unaccountably 
depressed ? To leave the friends of my heart, to tear myself 



42 I^IFE OF CUKRAN. 

from their last aftecting farewell, to turn my face to a distant 
region, separated from tliem by mountains, and oceans, and tem- 
pests ; to endure all this with something like calmness, and yet to 
feel pain at changing from one street to another ! Strange incon- 
sistence ! and yet so it was. I proceeded very slowly to fill the 
trunk. I could not please myself in the packing. Some letters 
now presented themselves ; I could not put them in Avithout read- 
ino". At leno-th I made an end to the work, and fell into another 
reverie ; I called to mind my first acquaintance with my little 
trunk ; I industriously hunted my memory for every thing that 
any way related to it, and gave my recollection a great deal of 
credit for being so successful in making me miserable. At length 
I got it behind Tom Gess, and saw poor Tom edging forward to 
avoid its jolting, and longing to be relieved from his durance. I saw 
it embark: over how many billows was it wafted, from Cork to Bris- 
tol, over how many miles from Bristol to London ! And how 
small a portion of that distance must it measure back to-day ! And 
must I be equally slow in my return ? With such sensations I left 
Mr. Turner's, perhaps as completely miserable as any man in London." 
Of some of his occupations, he gives the following account : 
" As to my amusements, they are very few. Since I wrote last, 
I went to one play. I commonly spend even more time at home, 
than I can employ in reading of an improAing and amusing kind.* 
As I live near the Park, I walk there some time every day. I 
sometimes find entertainment in visiting the diversity of eating- 
places with which this town abounds. Here every coal-porter is 
a politician, and vends his maxims in public with all the impor- 
tance of a man w^ho thinks he is exerting himself for the public 
service : he claims the privilege of looking as wise as possible, and 

* Mr. Curran's cotemporaries at the Temple have confirmed his own account of his 
habits at that period. He rose very early, studied till he was exhausted, and then went 
out in search of his fellow students, with whom he passed the interval till the evening, 
when they all generally repaired to any debating society that was open. During hi3 
second year at the Temple, he spent a considerable portion of his time in the courts of 
law.— C. 



ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. 43 

of talking as loud, of damning the ministry, and abusing tlie king, 
with less reserve tlian he would his own equal. Yet, little as these 
poor people understand of the liberty they contend so warmly for, 
or of the measures they rail against, it reconciles one to their 
absurdity, by considering that they are happy at so small an 
expense as being ridiculous; and they certainly receive more 
pleasure from the power of abusing, than they would from the 
reformation of what they condemn. I take the more satisfaction 
in this kind of company, as, while it diverts me, it has the addi- 
tional recommendation of reconciling economy with amusement. 

" Another portion of time I have set apart every day for think- 
ing of my absent friends. Though this is a duty that does not 
give much trouble to many, I have been obliged to confine it, or 
endeavour to confine it, within proper bounds : I have, therefore, 
made a resolution to avoid any reflections of this sort, except in 
their allotted season, that is, immediately after dinner. I am then 
in a tranquil, happy humour, and I increase that happiness by 
presenting to my fancy those I love in the most advantageous 
point of view : so that however severely I treat them when they 
intrude in the morning, I make them ample amends in the even- 
ing ; I then assure myself that they are twice as agreeable, and as 
wise and as good as they really are." 

The conclusion of this letter shall be given, if not for the sake 
of the incidents, at least to show the writer's sensibility to any 
pathetic occurrence that fell in his way. 

" I have lately made two acquaintances ; one a Frenchman, 
Dr. Du Garreau ; the other is a German, Mr. Skell, for whom I 
am indebted to the doctor. With this latter I am not yet much 
acquainted ; the former is really a man of understanding, and, I 
believe, of worth : he is the son of an advocate in Paris, and prac- 
tised there himself, as a physician, for some time. He had con- 
ceived an affection for a young lady with whom the difference of 
their religion prevented his union at home ; but, alas ! I believe 
love is of no particular sect ; at least so the lady seemed to think, 



44: LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

for she quitted France Avith liim, and took his honour as the 
security for his adhering to a ceremony performed between them 
in Holland. After three or four years' residence in Amsterdam, 
Avhere I suppose his practice was not considerable, he brought his 
wife and child to England, last November. She survived the 
journey but a few weeks, and left the poor man surrounded by 
every distress. His friends have pressed him to return ; but he is 
determined, at all events, to remain in England, rather than carry 
his daughter to a country where she would not be considered as 
leo-itimate. Rouelle had hinted to me that there was somethino; 
singular in his fortune, but I did not know the particulars till a 
few days since, that I breakfasted with him. He had taken his 
little child on his knee, and, after trifling with her for a few 
moments, burst into tears. Such an emotion could not but excite, 
as well as justify, some share of curiosity. The poor doctor 
looked as if he were conscious I felt for him, and his heart was 
too full to conceal his affliction. He kissed his Httle orphan, as 
he called her, and then endeavoured to acquaint me with the 
lamentable detail. It was the hardest story in the world to be 
told by a man of delicacy. He felt all the difficulties of it ; he 
had many things to palliate, some that wanted to be justified ; he 
seemed fully sensible of this, yet checked himself when he slided 
into anything like defence. I could perceive the conflict shifting 
the colours on his cheek, and I could not but pity him and admire 
him for such an embarrassment. Yet, notwithstanding all his dis- 
tresses, he sometimes assumes all the gaiety of a Frenchman, and 
is a very entertaining fellow. These are the occasions on which 
we are almost justified in repining at the want of affluence ; to 
relieve such an heart from part of its affliction, surely, for such a 
purpose, it is not ambitious to wish for riches." 

One more of his letters, in this year, shall be introduced, as 
characteristic of his mind. The person to whom it is addressed, 
a gentleman of the most amiable and respected character, has sur- 
nved the waiter, but his name is, at his own request, reluctantly 



CHARACTERISTIC LETTER. 45 

omitted. The friendship of which the commencement of tins 
letter contains a proof, continued without diminution to the day 
of Mr. Curran's death. 

"My Dear Dick :— 

"Your packet was one of the most seasonable, on every 
account. As I think I mentioned to you when I should repay this 
kindness, in m}' last, I need not repeat it here. I hope you do n't 
expect any news from me ; if you did, I would be under a neces- 
sity of disappointing you. Unfortunately, I have no gratification 
in seeing high houses or tall steeples, no ear to be ravished by 
barrel-organs, no public anxiety or private importance by which 
vanity might lay hold on me, no fine clothes, no abundance of 
money, to recommend me to the deity of pleasure. What, then, 
can a poor devil like me either see or hear that is worth commu- 
nicating to a friend ? In truth, I think I am nearly the same man 
I ever was ; affecting to look wise, and to talk wise, and exhaust- 
ing most lavishly on looking and talking, the wisdom that a better 
economist would reserve for acting. And yet, Dick, perhaps this 
is natural ; perhaps we are mistaken when we wonder at finding 
frugality, or even avarice, on such good terms with atfiuence, and 
extravagance inseparable from poverty. In both cases, they are 
effects that flow^ naturally from their causes. They are the gen- 
uine issue of their respective parents; who, to own the truth, 
cherish and preserve their offspring with a care truly parental, and 
unfailingly successful. 'Tis just so in wisdom, and, on the same 
principle, the man who has but a very small share of wisdom 
(like him whose purse is equally shallow) squanders it away on 
every silly occasion ; he thinks it too trifling to be worth hoarding 
against emergencies of moment : but a very wise man, or a very 
rich man, acts in a manner diametrically opposite to this. When 
the one has ranged his sentiments and marshalled his maxims, 
and the other computed his tens of thousands, the symmetry of 
their labours would be destroyed should a single dogma escape to 



46 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

the banners of lln^Yiseness, or a single guinea take its flight to 
supply an extravagance. Each atom of the aggregate is held fast 
by its gravitation to the whole mass ; hence the fool is prodigal of 
his little wisdom, and the sixpence departs in peace from the 
pocket where it is not troubled with the ceremony of bidding 
adieu to another. If any chance should make me master of some 
enormous treasure, I would not despair of finding out its value ; 
and if experience, and the industry of my own folly, shall reap a 
harvest of prudence, I will make you wonder at my care in drying 
it for use. I will regale myself in my old age with the spirit of 
it, and dispense the small tea to those who may have occasion 
for it." 

During Mr. Curran's attendance at the Temj^le, the society in 
v\"hich he mixed was almost exclusively that of his Irish fellow- 
students. He was at that time too unknown to have access to the 
circle of literature or fashion, and it was perhaps fortunate for 
him that his obscurity saved him from those scenes where he 
might have c#ntracted the dangerous ambition of soaring when 
he should have been learning to fly. Of the celebrated persons 
then in London, he used to mention that he had seen Goldsmith 
once at a coffee-house, Garrick (whom he recollected with 
enthusiasm) two or three times upon the stage, and Lord Mans- 
field, whose dignified appearance made a very solemn impression 
upon him, upon the bench. The only man of any eminence 
that he came into personal contact with Avas Macklin, the actor, 
and the origin of their acquaintance vras rather singular. 

After Mr. Curran had concluded his terms, he was detained for 
some time in London in expectation of a remittance from Ireland, 
without which he could neither discharge his arrears at his lodg- 
ings, nor return to his own country. At length, just as his purse 
had attained " the last stage of inanition," he received a bill of 
exchange upon a banking-house in Lombard-street: without 
stopping to examine the bill minutely, he flew to present it ; but 
the banker soon discovered that a necessary indorsement was 



MACKLIN, THE ACTOK. 47 

omitted, and of course refused to pay it. Of the scene upon this 
occasion, as it took place across the counter, his own consterna- 
tion at the dreadful tidings, and the banker's insensibility to his 
distress, his solemn and repeated protestations that the bill came 
from the most respectable merchant in the butter trade at Cork, 
and the wary citizen's marked distrust of all that was Irish, Mr. 
Curran used to give a most dramatic and luxurious description. 
Having left the banker's, and being without a shilling in his 
pocket, he strolled into St. James' Park, where he remained 
during his usual dinner hour, considering the means of relieving 
himself from his present necessity ; but after long reflection, he 
could only come to one certain conclusion, that the misfortune 
could never have happened more inopportunely, every one of his 
Irish friends, to whom alone he could have applied, having 
quitted London, leaving him behind, awaiting this remittance. 

As he sat upon one of the benches, exhausted with devising 
expedients, he began to whistle a melancholy old Irish air ; an 
old gentleman seated at the other end (it was Macklin) started at 
the well-known sounds. 

" Pray, sir," said the stranger, " may I venture to ask where 
you learned that tune ?" 

" Indeed, sir," replied the whistler, in the meek and courteous 
tone of a spirit wdiich affliction had softened, " indeed you may, 
sir ; I learned it in my native country, in Ireland." 

" But how comes it, sir, that at this hour, w^hile other people 
are dining, you continue here, whistling old Irish airs ?" 

" Alas ! sir, I too have been in the habit of dining of late, but 
to-day, my money being all gone, and my credit not yet arrived, I 
am even forced to come and dine upon a whistle in the park." 

Struck by the mingled despondence and playfulness of this 
confession, the benevolent veteran exclaimed, "Courage, young- 
man ! I think I can see that you deserve better fare; come 
along with me, and you shall have it." 

About ten years after this interview Macklin came to Dublin : 



48 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

Mr. Curran, mIio in the interval had risen to eminence, was 
invited one evening to a party v>'here the actor was one of the 
company ; they were presented to each other, but Mackhn failed 
to recognize in the now celebrated advocate and orator, the 
distressed student in St. James' Park. Mr, Curran, perceiving 
this, abstained for the moment from claiming any acquaintance ; 
but he contrived in a little time to introduce a conversation upon 
the acts of kindness and hospitality Avhich Irishmen so generally 
receive abroad from such, of their countrymen as they may chance 
to meet ; as a proof of which, he began to relate what had hap- 
pened to himself, and proceeded to give a vivid picture of the 
scene, and (suppressing the name) of the generous old man who 
had befriended him in a land of strangers. A glow of recollec- 
tion was soon observed upon the player's countenance ; he started, 
and fixing his eyes upon the speaker, " If my memory fails me 
not, sir," said he, " vre have met before ?" " Yes, Mr. Macklin," 
replied Mr. Curran, taking his hand, " indeed we have met ; and 
though upon that occasion you were only performing upon a 
private theatre, let me assure you, that (to adopt the words of 
a high judicial personage, which you have heard before) you never 
acted hettery* 

Before dismissing this period of Mr. Curran's history, a few 
words may be added upon the subject of the studies, and intellec- 
tual habits of his early days ; for, in consequence of his not hav- 
ing devoted much time in his latter years to books, and still more 
from the great predominance of imagination over learning, to be 
observed in all the j^roductions of his mind, an opinion has gene- 
rally prevailed that his reading was. extremely circumscribed, and 
that he was, from taste or by constitution, intolerant of any regu- 
lar application. If such were the fact, notwithstanding the dan- 



* These words were addressed from the bench by Lord Mansfield to Mr. Macklin, to 
mark his approbation of the liberal conduct of the latter in a cause to which he was a 
party, and which was tried before his lordship in 1774. The proceedings in that interest- 
ing case are given at length in Kirkman's life of Macklin.— C. 



HIS LITEKARY PURSUITS. 49 

ger of the example, it still would not be denied ; tlie indolent 
should have all the benefit or all the mischief of such a precedent; 
but, in truth, Mr. Curran never was a mere gifted idler. He 
might not, indeed, have been always found with a book before 
him, he might not have been nominally a severe student, but for 
the course of forty years he kept his faculties in perpetual exer- 
cise ; and if all that he created in public, or in the society of his 
friends, had been composed in the retirement of the closet, it 
would have scarcely been asserted that idleness was the habit of 
his mind. 

In his youth he was a formal student, to a greater extent than 
is generally supposed. Before he had attained the age of twenty- 
five, when he was called to the bar, independent of his classical 
acquirements, which have never been doubted, his acquaintance 
Avith general literature was far from inconsiderable ; he was per- 
fectly familiar with all the most jjopular of the English poets, his- 
torians, and speculative w^riters. He had, at the same age, with 
little assistance but that of books, acquired more than a common 
knowledge of the French language. If he did not pursue a long- 
consecutive course of legal reading, he was yet perpetually making 
a vigorous plunge, from which he seldom returned without some 
proof that he had reached the bottom. For several years after 
his admission to the bar, he devoted more of his mornings and 
evenings to the study of his profession than his most intimate 
friends at the time could have believed to be compatible with his 
convivial habits and public avocations. His frame w^as never 
robust, but it was extremely patient of fatigue ; and no matter 
how great the exhaustion of the day, or the evening, a very few 
hours sleep completely restored it ; this natural felicity of consti- 
tution he confirmed by early rising, constant exercise, the daily 
practice of cold bathing, and similar methods of invigorating the 
system. 

Indeed, when it is recollected that Mr. Curran, at the period of 

3 



50 We of curran. 

his life at present under consideration, was looking to the bar 
alone for the means of future subsistence, and for the gratification 
of his ambition, it is utterly incredible that he should have 
neglected the ordinary arts by Avhich success was to be attained. 
According to the concurring accounts given by himself and his 
cotemporaries, he neglected none of them. Eloquence was at that 
time not only the most popular, but one of the shortest roads to 
eminence at the Irish bar ; and from the moment of the discovery 
of his powers as a speaker, he began, and continued, to cultivate 
them with the utmost assiduity. His enunciation (as has been 
already observed) was naturally impeded, his voice shrill, and his 
accent strongly provincial, or (to use his own expression) " in a 
state of nature;" to remove these defects, he adopted the -pYactice 
of daily reading aloud, slowly and distinctly, and of most studi- 
ously observing and imitating the tones and manner of more 
skilful speakers. The success of this exercise and study was so 
complete, that among his most unrivalled excellencies as an orator, 
were the clearness of his articulation, and a peculiar, uninterrupted, 
graduated intonation ; which whatever was the subject, whether 
tender or impassioned, melodised every period. His person was 
without dignity or grace — short, slender, and inelegantly propor- 
tioned. To attain an action, that might conceal as much as pos- 
sible these deficiencies, he recited perpetually before a mirror, and 
selected the gesticulation that he thought best adapted to his im- 
perfect stature. To habituate his mind to extemporaneous fluency, 
he not only regularly attended the debating clubs of London, but, 
both before and after his admission to the bar, resorted to a system 
of solitary exercise, of which the irksomeness cannot be well 
appreciated by those who have never practised it. He either 
extracted a case from his books, or proposed to himself some origi- 
nal question ; and this he used to debate alone, with the same anx- 
ious attention to argument and to diction, as if he were discussing 
it in open court. There is nothing in all this to excite any won- 



HIS FAYOKITE ACTIIORS. 51 

der ; but certainly the person who early submitted to these modes 
of labour, and frequently resumed them, cannot be considered as 
careless or incapable of application. 

It may be a matter of curiosity with some, to know the writers, 
that, having been Mr. Curran's early favourites, may be supposed 
to have had an influence in forming his style. Some of his 
letters, already given, discover in different passages a preference 
for the manner of Sterne ; a similar resemblance appears more 
frequently, and more strongly, in several others of about the same 
date, which have not been introduced. It was from the " Letters 
of Junius," that he generally declaimed before a glass.* Junius 
and Lord Bolingbroke, were the English prose writers, whom he 
at that time studied as the most perfect models of the declama- 
tory style. Among the English poets, he was passionately fond 
of " Thomson's Seasons." He often selected exercises of delivery 
from " Paradise Lost," which he then admired, but subsequently 
(and it is hoped that few will attempt to justify the change) his 
sensibiHty to the beauties of that noble poem greatly subsided.f 
In this list, the sacred writings must not be omitted ; indepen- 
dent of their more solemn titles to his respect, Mr. Curran was 
from his childhood exquisitely alive to their mere literary excel- 
lencies ; and in his maturer years seldom failed to resort to them, 
as to a source of the most splendid and awful topics of persuasion. J 

* The single exercise that he most frequently repeated for the purpose of improving 
his acrion and intonation, was the speech of Antony over Caesar's body, from Shakspeare's 
Julius Cresar. This he considered to be a master-piece of eloquence, comprising in itself, 
and involving in its delivery, the whole compass of the art. lie studied it incessantly, 
and pronounced it with great skill, but though he delighted his auditors, he never 
entirely satisfied himself; he uniformly recommended it as a lesson to his yoicng friends 
at the bar. — C. 

t In criticising Milton, Mr. Curran always dwelt upon what others have considered 
among the most splendid and attractive parts of his work, the scenes in Paradise ; in 
objtcting to which, he contended that the human characters introduced are detached 
and solitary beings, whose peculiar situation precluded them from displaying the various 
social feelings and passions, which are the proper subjects of poetic emotion. For a 
vigorous and eloquent answer to this objection, see Hazlitt's observations on Paradise 
Lost, in his Lectures upon the English Poets. — C. 

X Of all the profane writer3, Virgil, whom he considered " the prince of sensitive poets," 



52 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

Before quitting the subject of Mr. Currau's youtliful habits, it 
is proper to mention the pleasure that he took in occasionally 
mingling in the society of the lower orders of his countrymen : 
he was a frequent attendant at the weddings and wakes of his 
neio'hbourhood. Beino^ from his infancy familiar with the native 
Irish language, he lost nothing of whatever interest such meet- 
ings could aftbrd. They appear to have had considerable influ- 
ence on his mind ; he used to say himself, that he derived his 
first notions of poetry and eloquence from the compositions of the 
hired mourner over the dead.^ It was probably amidst those 
scenes that he acquired the rudiments of that thorough know- 
ledge of the Irish character, of which he afterwards made so 
amusing an use in enlivening a company, and so important a one 
in confounding a perjured witness. It may have been too in this 
humble intercourse that some even of his finer tastes and feelings 
originated or w^ere confirmed. Out of Ireland the genius of its 
natives is, in general, but partly known. They are, for the most 
part, represented as comical and impetuous, qualities which, lying 
upon the surface, strike the stranger and superficial observer ; but 
with these they unite the deepest sensibility. It is the latter that 
prevails ; and if their pathetic sayings had been as sedulously 



was his favourite. For a considerable part of his life, he made it a rule to read Homer 
once a year; but the more congenial tenderness of Virgil attracted him every day. — C. 

* It may be necessary to inform some English readers, that the practice of formal 
lamentations over the dead is one of the ancient customs of the Irish, wliich is continued 
among the lower orders to the present day. In the last century, it was not usual upon 
the death of pei'sons of the highest condition. The ceremony is generally performed by 
women, who receive a remuneration for composing and reciting a " Coronach " at the 
wake of the departed. In some parts of Ireland, these women used formerly to go 
about the country, to " look in " upon such elderly persons as might soon require their 
attendance; and to remind them, that whenever the hour might arrive, a noble Coro- 
nach should be ready. Mr. Curran's father-in-law. Dr. Creagh, was so molested by one of 
these dispiriting visitors, and had such an aversion to the usage, that in the first will he 
ever made, he thus begins, after the usual preamble, " requesting it as a favour of ray 
executors, that, neither at my wake nor at my funeral, they will suffer any of the savage 
bowlings, and insincere lamentations, that are usually practised upon these serious and 
melancholy occasions, but to see the whole of my burial conducted with silence and 
Christian decency." — C. 



DAWN OF III3 ELOQUENCE. 63 

recorded as tlieir lively sallies, it would be seen tliat tliey can 
be as eloquent in tlieir lamentations as tliey are original in tbeir 
liumour. Of these almost national peculiarities, so opposite, yet 
to constantly associated, Mr. Curran's mind strongly partook ; and 
in liis, as in his country's character, melancholy predominated. 
In his earliest, as well as his latest speculations, he declined to 
take a desponding view of human aftairs — he appeared, indeed, 
more frequently in smiles to relax his mind, or to entertain his 
companions ; but when left entirely to his original propensities, he 
seems to have ever wept from choice. 

[If Mr. O'Regan's account can be relied on, Cun-an's predispo- 
sition for eloquence may be traced to an event which occurred 
while he was a child, at a wake, in his native Newmarket. The 
story runs thus : 

" At one of those national carnivals, where the common excitements of 
snufF, tobacco, and whiskey, and the fruits of plundered orchards, are 
abundantly supplied, Mr. Curran felt the first dawn, the new-born light, 
and favourite transport which almost instantly seized upon his imagina- 
tion, and determined his mind to the cultivation and pursuit of oratory. 
It was produced by the speech of a tall, finely-shaped woman, with long 
black hair flowing loosely down her shoulders ; her stature and eye com- 
manding ; her air and manner austere and majestic. On such occasions, 
nothing is prepared : all arises out of the emotion excited by the surround- 
ing circumstances and objects. 

" Some of the kindred of the deceased had made funeral orations on his 
merits: they measured their eulogies by his bounties; he was wealthy *, 
his last will had distributed among his relations his fortune and effects ; 
but to this woman, who married without his consent, to her, his favourite 
niece, a widow, and with many children, he carried his resentment to the 
grave, and left her poor and totally unprovided for. She sat long in 
silence, and at length, slowly, and with a measured pace, approaching the 
dead body from a distant quarter of the room, with the serenest calm of 
meditation, laying her hand on his forehead, she paused : and, whilst all 
present expected a passionate and stormy expression of her anger and 
disappointment, she addressed these few words to him : ' Those of my kin- 
dred who have uttered praises, and poured them forth with their tears, to 
the memory of the deceased, did that which, by force of obligation, they 



54: LIFE OF CUERAN. 

were bound to do. They have been bc-ncfited ; they have, in their different 
degrees, profited by that bounty which he could no longer withhold. He 
forgot, in his life, the exercise of that generosity by which his memory 
might now be held regarded and embalmed in the hearts of a disinte- 
rested ' affection. Such consolation, however, as these purchased praises 
could impart to his spirit, I would not, by any impiety, tear from him. 
Cold in death is this head, not colder than that heart while living, through 
which no thrill of nature did ever vibrate. This has thrown the errors of 
my youth, and of an impulse too obedient to that affection which I still 
cherish, into poverty and sorrow, heightened beyond hope by the loss of 
him who is now in heaven, and still more by the tender pledges he has 
left after him on earth. But I shall not add to these reflections the bitter 
remorse of inflicting even a merited calumny ; and because my blood 
coursed through his veins, I shall not have his memory scored or tortured 
by the expression of my disappointment, or of the desolation which sweeps 
through my heart. It, therefore, best becomes me to say, his faith and 
honor, in the other relations of life, were just and exact ; and that these 
may have imposed a severity on his principles and manners. The tears 
which now swell my eyes are those I cannot check ; but they rise like bub- 
bles on a mountain-stream — they burst never more to appear."] 

One conjecture more shall be hazarded, and so pleasing a one, 
that few can wish it to be unfounded. It was probably from this 
early intercourse with the peasantry of his country, and from the 
consequent conviction of their unmerited degradation, that sprang 
that unaffected soul-felt sympathy for their condition, so conspicu- 
ous in Mr. Curran's poHtical career. Upon this subject, it was 
evident that his heart was deeply involved. From them, notwith- 
standing much temptation and many dangers, his affections never 
wavered for an instant. From the first dawn of political obliga- 
tion upon his mind to his latest hour (an interval of more than 
half a century), he never thought or spoke of them but with 
tenderness, and pity. iVt the bar, in the senate,^ on the bench, 

* Upon one occasion, alluding in parliament to the general apathy of the ministry to 
the condition of the great body of the Irish people, he observed : " I am sorry to see that 
the rays of the honourable member's panegyric were not vertical ; like the beams of the 
morning, they courted the mountain-tops, and left the valleys unilluminated— they fell 
only upon the great, while the miserable poor ware left in the sh?i(\e. ^'—DebaUs in Irish 
House of Commons, 17S7.— C. 



UI3 EARLY SUCCESS. 55 

amidst his family and friends, or in the society of the most ilkis- 
trious personages of the empire, the sutterings of the Irish peasant 
were remembered, and their cause pleaded with an energy and 
reality that proved how well he knew, and how deeply he felt for, 
that class whose calamities he deplored. " At any time of my life," 
said he, '• I might, to a certain degree, as well as others, have tied 
np my countrymen in bundles, and sold them at the filthy market 
of corruption, and have raised myself to wealth and station, and 
remorse — to the envy of the foolish, and the contempt of the wise ; 
but I thought it more becoming to remain below among them, to 
mourn over and console them ; or, where my duty called upon 
me, to reprimand and rebuke them, when they were acting 
against themselves." 

In some of the published accounts of Mr. Curran's life, it has 
been stated that, when at the Temple, and afterwards while strug- 
gling into notice at the bar, he derived part of his subsistence 
from contributions to literary works ; but for this there is no foun- 
dation. During the first year of his residence in London, his means 
were supplied partly by his relatives in Ireland, and partly by 
some of his more affluent companions, who considered his talents 
a sufficient security for their advances. In the second year, he 
married a daughter of the Dr. Creagh already mentioned ; her 
portion was not considerable, but it was so carefully managed, and 
his success at the bar was so rapid, that he was ever after a 
stranger to pecuniary difficulties. 

It may, too, be here observed that, had he been originally more 
favoured by fortune, his prospect of distinguished success in his 
])]'ofession might not have been so great. There is, perhaps, fully 
as much truth as humour in the assertion of an English judge, 
tliat a barrister's first requisite for attaining eminence is '''■not to he 
■ ■■<))' th a shillwr/y* The attractions of the bar, when viewed from 

* The learned ju.lge alliuied to, upon being asked "What conduced most to a bairis- 
tei's success?" is suid to have replied, "that barristers succeeded by many methods; 
some by great tiilents, some by high connections, some by a miracle, but the majority ly 
commencinrj wiUiotd a shilling. ''^—Q. 



56 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 

a distance, will dazzle and seduce for a while. To a young and 
generous spirit, it seems, no doubt, a proud thing to mix in a 
scene where merit and talent alone are honoured, where he can 
emulaj^e the example, and perhaps reach the distinctions of our 
Hales, and Holts, and Manslields. But all this fancied loveliness 
of the prospect vanishes, the moment you approach and attempt 
to ascend. As a calling, the bar is perhaps the most difficult, and, 
after the first glow of enthusiasm has gone by, the most repelling. 
To say nothing of the violence of the competition, which alone 
renders it the most hazardous of professions, the intellectual 
labour, and the unintellectual drudgery that it involves, are such 
as few have the capacity, or, without the strongest incitements, 
the patience to endure. To an active and philosophic mind, the 
mere art of reasoning, the simple perception of relations, wdiatever 
the subject matter may be, is an exercise in which a mind so con- 
stituted may delight ; but, to such a one, the study of the law has 
but little to offer. If the body of English law be a scientific sys- 
tem, it is a long time a secret to the student : it has few immuta- 
ble truths, few master-maxims, few regular series of necessary and 
nicely adapted inferences. In vain will the student look for a 
few general principles, to whose friendly guidance he may trust, 
to conduct him unerringly to his object : to him, it is all perplex- 
ity, caprice, and contradiction"^ — arbitrary and mysterious rules, 
of which to trace and comprehend the reasons is the work of 
years — forced constructions, to w^hich no equity of intention can 
reconcile — logical evasions, from which the mind's pride indig- 
nantly revolts — of all these, the young lawyer meets abundance in 
his books; and to encounter and tolerate them, he must have 

* This was, at least, what Mr. Curran found it. In his poem on " Friendship," already 
mentioned, he says : 

" Oft, when condemn'd 'midst Gothic tomes to pour, 
And, dubious, con th' embarras'd sentence o'er, 
While meteor meaning sheds a sickly ray 
Through the thick gloom, then vanishes away, 
With the dull toil tired out, th' indignant mind 
Bursts from the yoke, and wanders unconfined."— C. 



THE AMEEICAN EAK. 67 

some stronger inducement than a mere literal ambition of learn- 
ing or of fame. We consequently find that there is no other 
profession supplying so many members who never advance a single 
step ; no other which so many abandon, disgusted and disheart- 
ened by the sacrifices that it exacts. 

To these fearful pursuits, Mr. Curran brought every requisite of 
mind and character, and education, besides the above and grand 
requisite of want of fortune. Instead of being surprised at his 
eminent success, the wonder w^ould have been if such a man had 
failed. Having acquirements and hopes, and a station, above his 
circumstances, to hold his ground, he could not allow his powders 
to slumber for a moment. His poverty, his pride, a secret consci- 
ousness of his value, and innate superstitious dread of obscurity, 
" that last infirmity of noble minds," kept him forever in motion, 
and impatient to realize his own expectations, and the predictions 
of those friends by whom his efforts w^ere applauded and assisted. 

It appears, in a passage of one of his letters from the Temple, 
that he had, for a while, an idea of trying his fortune at the 
American bar. " Mrs. W.," says he, " concluded her letter with 
mentioning her purpose of revisiting America, and repeating her 
former advice to me on that subject. As for my part, I am totally 
undetermined. I may well say, with Sir Roger de Coverly, that 
' much may be said on both sides.' The scheme might be attended 
with advantage ; yet I fear my mother, especially, would not be 
easily reconciled to such a step." But he soon abandoned the 
idea ; for, in a letter dated a few weeks after, he says : " As to the 
American project, I presume it is unnecessary to tell you that the 
motives are now no more, and that the design has expired of conse- 
quence. I have been urged to be called to that bar, and my chief 
inducement w^as my friendship for Mrs. W., to wdiom I might be 
useful in that way ; but there is so little likelihood of her going, 
that I shall scarcely have an opportunity of sacrificing that 
motive to my attachment for Ireland." 



58 LIFE OF CURE AN. 



CHAPTER III. 



Mr. Curran called to the Irish Bar— Dissimilarities between that and the is-ugiisu i>a.i- 
Causes of the Difference. 



Mr. Curran was called in Michaelmas term, iVYo, to tlie Irish 
bar, which \yas to occupy so distinguished a portion of his future 
life ; but as the genius and habits of that bar, during the whole 
of his career, differed in many particulars essentially from that of 
England, it will be necessary to make a passing allusion to tliose 
distinctions, without which English readers might find it difficult 
to reconcile the specimens of his eloquence that occur in the fol- 
lowing pages, with their previous ideas of forensic oratory. 

No person who has attended to the course of forensic proceed- 
ings in the two countries can have failed to have observed, that 
while in England they are (with a very few exceptions) carried on 
with cold and rigorous formality, in Ireland they have not unfre- 
quently been marked by the utmost vivacity and eloquence. The 
English barrister, even in cases of the deepest interest, where 
jiowerful emotions are to be excited, seldom ventures to exercise his 
imagination, if, indeed, long habits of restraint have left him the 
capacity to do so : yet in the Irish courts, not only are such sub- 
jects discussed in a style of the most impassioned oratory, but 
many examples might be produced, where questions more strictly 
technical, and apparently the most inappropriate themes of elo- 
quence, have still been made the occasion of very fervid appeals 
to the feehngs or the fancy. This latitude of ornament and 
digression, once so usual at the Irish bar, has been never known, 
and would never have been tolerated in Westminster Hall. It 



IRISH FORENSIC ORATORY. 59 

would be tliere accounted no less new than extravagant to hear a 
counsel pathetically reminding the presiding judge of the convi- 
vial meetings of their early days/-^' or enlivening his arguments 
on a grave question of lavv' by humorous illustration.f Yet was 
all this listened to in Ireland with nivor and admiration. It had, 
indeed, little inliuence upon the decisions of the bench. The 
advocate might have excited the smiles or tears of his hearers, 
but no legal concessions followed. The Judges who showed the 
most indulgence and sensibility to these episodes of fancy were 
ever the most conscientious in preserving the sacred stability of 
law. Into the Counsel's mirth or tenderness, no matter how 
digressive, they entered for the moment more pleased than other- 
wise with irregularities that gratified their taste and relieved their 
labour ; but with them the triumph of eloquence was but evanes- 
cent — the oration over, they resumed their gravity and firmness, 
and proved by their ultimate decision, that if they relaxed for an 
instant, it was from urbanity, and not from any oblivion of the 
paramount duties of their station. The effects, however, which 
such appeals to the passions produced (as they still continue to 
do) upon juries, was very ditlerent ; and when the advocate trans- 
ferred the same style into his addresses to the bench, it was not 
that his judgment had selected it as the most appropriate, but 

♦ See Mr. Curran's apostrophe to Lord Avonmore, chap, iv.— C. 

t Of tliese examples without number might be produced from Mr. Curran's law argu- 
ments. His published speech in the Court of Exchequer, on Mr. Justice Johnson's case, 
is full of them. Equallj"- striking instances occur in his argument on the same question 
before the Court of King's Bench. " The minister going to the House of Commons might 
be arrested upon the information of an Irish chairman, and the warrant of a trading 
justice. Mr. Pitt might be brouglit over here in vincmlis. What to do ? to see whether 
he can be bailed or not. I remember Mr. Fox was once here — during the lifetime of this 
country — so might he be brought over. It may facilitate the intercourse between the 
countries, for any man may travel at the public expense ; as, suppose I gave an Irish- 
man in London a small assault in trust, when the vacation comes, he knocks at the door 
of a trading justice, and tells him he wants a warrant against the counsellor. What 
counsellor ? Oh, sure every body knows the counsellor. Well, friend, and what is your 
name? Thady O'Flannigan, please your honour. What countryman are you? An 
Englishman, by constmction. Very wellj I '11 tJra^ upon my correspondent in Ireland 
for the body of the counsellor," — 0. 



60 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

because he found it impossible to avoid relapsing into tliose modes 
of influencing the mind, which he had been long habituated to 
employ with so much success in another quarter. 

In accounting for this adoption at the Irish bar, of a style of 
eloquence so much more fervid and poetical than the severer 
notions of the English Courts would approve, something must be 
attributed to the influence of the national character. From what- 
ever cause it has arisen, the Irish are by temperament confessedly 
more warm and impetuous than their neighbours : their passions 
lying nearer the surface, their actions are more governed by 
impulse, and their diction more adorned by imagination, than it 
would be reasonable to expect in a colder, more advanced, and 
philosophic people. In addressing persons so constituted, the 
methods most likely to prevail are suflSciently obvious. The ora- 
tor, who knows anything of his art, must be aware that frigid 
demonstration alone is not the best adapted to men who take a 
kind of pride in regulating their decisions by their emotions, and 
that a far more certain artifice of persuasion must be to fill their 
minds with those glowing topics by which they habitually per- 
suade themselves. 

It may be observed, too, that although the habits of mind 
which must be cultivated, in order to succeed in such a style of 
eloquence, are altogether difi'erent from those involved in the study 
of the law ; yet in Ireland they have never been deemed incom- 
patible with legal occupations. The preparation for the bar 
there has never been so entirely technical as it usually is in 
England : a very general taste for polite literature and popular 
acquirements has been united with the more stern and laborious 
attainments of professional knowledge, and it is to this combina- 
tion of pursuits, that invigorate the understanding wdth those 
which exercise the imagination and improve the taste, that must 
be attributed that mass of varied and efi'ective talent, which has 
so long existed among the members of the Irish bar. 

But the immediate cause of that animated style of eloquence 



ENGLISH BAR ORATOUr. 61 

that has of late years prevailed there, appears to have been the 
inliuence of the Irish House of Commons. 

It v,-as principally in the productions of the eminent leaders in 
that house, that originated the modern school of Irish oratory. 
In Ireland this popular style made its way from the senate to the 
bar ; though at first view such a transition may not seem either 
necessary or natural. In England it has not taken place. At the 
time that the first Mr. Pitt, the pride of the English senate, was 
exalting and delighting his auditors by the majesty of his con- 
ceptions and the intrepid .oi^ginality of his diction, Westminster 
Hall remained inaccessible to any contagious inspiration. At a 
later period, upon the memorable trial of Warren Hastings, the 
contrast is brought more palpably to view. While the celebrated 
prosecutors in that cause w^ere soaring as high as imagination 
could find language to sustain it, while they were " shaking the 
walls that surrounded them with those anathemas of super-human 
eloquence,"* which remain among the recorded models of British 
oratory, the lawyers, who conducted the defence, were in general 
content to retaliate with tranquil argument and uninspired refuta- 
tion. Introduction, therefore, of the parliamentary manner into 
the courts of Ireland, is to be accounted for by some circum- 
stances peculiar to the country. 

During that period when eloquence flourished most in the Irish 
Parliament, that is, for the last forty years of its existence, the 
number of barristers in the House of Commons bore a much 

* Erskine's defence of Stockdale. This celebrated advocate may be adduced in refu- 
tation of some of the above ophiions, and it must be admitted that in some degree he 
forms an exception ; yet, without inquiring now, whether his was a style of eloquence 
peculiar to the individual, or characteristic to tlie English bar, it may be observed, that 
it differed essentially from that which prevailed at this time in the British parliament, 
and to a still greater extent in the Irish senate arid at the Irish bar. If he had produced 
many such passages as that of the American savage, it would have been otherwise ; but 
his general strength did not lie in the fervour of his imagination ; it was by the vigour of 
his ethics and his logic, enforced by illustrations rather fclicitious than impassioned, that 
he brought over the judgment to his side. It is not intended by these remarks to assign 
a superiority to either style — it is to be supposed that the eminent advocates of the two 
bars adopted the manner that was best suited to their respective countries.— C. 



Cr2 



LIFE OF C UUP. AX, 



greater proportion to the wliole than has been at any time usual 
in England. In those days the poHcy by which Ireland was 
governed being in the utmost degree unpopular, the whole patro- 
nage of the Irish administration was necessarily expended in 
alluring supporters of the measures against w^hich the nation 
exclaimed. A majority of numbers in the House of Commons 
could then be easily procured, and for a long time such a majority 
had been sufficient for every purpose of the government ; but at 
that period in question, the increasing influence and talent of the 
minority rendered it necessary to adopt every method of oppos- 
ing them (if possible) with a predominance of intellect. The 
means of doing this, it would appear, were not to be found in 
that body w^hich ruled the country, and recourse was had to the 
expedient of enlisting the rising men of the bar in the service of 
the Administration."^^ Accordingly, every barrister who had 
popular abilities enough to render his support of any moment, 
found a ready admission into Parliament, upon the condition of 
his declaring for the Viceroy ; and in the event of his displaying 
sufficient talent and constancy, was certain of being rewarded 
with the highest honours of his profession. 

But independent of those who w^re thus introduced to the 
senate, the bar was the profession most generally resorted to by 
the members or dependents of the highest families ; as one in 

* Such was the commencement of (among others) the late Lord Clonmel's fortune. 
" The JIarquis of Townshend had expressed his wishes to Lord Chancellor Lifford, for the 
assistance of some j'oung gentleman of the bar, on whose talent and fidelity he might rely, 
in the severe parliamentary campaigns then (1769) likely to take place. Lord Lififord, 
recommended Mr. Scott, who was accordingly retm-ned to parliament, to oppose the party 
led on by the celebrated Flood." — Hardi/^s Life of Lord Charlemont. The necessity 
of calling in such aid gives us but a poor idea of the education and talents of the Irish 
aristocracy of the time. Mr Grattan, in 1797, thus mentions the great improvement in 
the intellect of his country that he had witnessed. " The progress of the human mind . 
in the course of the last twenty-five years has been prodigious in Ireland ; I remember 
Tvhen there scarcely appeared a publication in a newspaper of any degree of merit, 
which has not been traced to some person of note, on the part of government or the 
opposition ; but now a multitude of very powerful publications appear, from authors 
entirely unknown, of profound and spirited investigation." — Letter to the citizens of 
Dublin— C. 



POLITICS AND LAWS. 63 

Avliich, without any claim of merit, tliey could, tlirough tho 
influence of their patrons, obtain situations of professional emolu- 
ment, and where, if they possessed such a claim, the road was so 
open to leg-al preferment and to political distinction ; and con- 
sequently all of the latter description, recommended by their 
talents, and supported by the power of their connexions, found 
access to the House of Commons, long- before that period of 
standing and of professional reputation, at which the successful 
English barrister is accustomed or deems it prudent to become a 
senator. 

These circumstances alone would in a great degree account 
for the number of lawyers in the Irish Parliament ; but it should 
be farther observed, that it was not any particular class that 
looked to or obtained a seat in that assembly : the ambition of 
appearing there was very general at the Irish bar ; it was the 
grand object upon which every enterprising barrister fixed his 
eye and his heart. This was the age of political speculation ; it 
was " Ireland's lifetime." Great original questions were daily in 
her Parliament : the struggle betw^een popular claims and ancient 
prerogatives was a scene where much seemed likely to be gained 
— by the venal for themselves, by the honest for their country ; 
but whether considered as a post of honour or of profit, it was 
one to which men of colder temperaments than the Irish might 
be easily moved to aspire. 

The consequence of this intermixture of political with legal pur- 
suits was, that the talents most suited to advance the former were 
much cultivated and constantly exercised ; and from this differ- 
ence in the objects and habits of the bars of the two countries 
appear to have principally resulted the different styles of oratory 
displayed by the members of each, both in their parliamentary 
and forensic exertions. The English barrister, long disciplined to 
technical observances, having passed the vigour of his intellect 
in submissive reverence to rules and authorities, brings into the 
House of Commons the same subtle propensities, and the same 



61 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 

dread of expanded investigation and of rhetorical ornament that 
his professional duties imposed ; but in Ireland the leading coun- 
sel were also from an early age distinguished members of the 
senate. If in the morning their horizon vras bounded by their 
briefs, in a few hours their minds were free to rise, and extend it 
as far as the statesman's eye could reach ; they had the daily 
excitation and tumult of popular debate to clear away any 
momentary stagnations of fancy or enterprize ; the lawyer became 
enlarged into the legislator, and instead of introducing into the 
efforts of the latter the coldness and constraint of his professional 
manner, he rather delighted to carry back with him to the forum, 
all the fervour, and pomp, and copiousness of the deliberative 
style. 

The Parliament of Ireland, the nurse of the genius and am- 
bition of its bar, is now extinct ; but the impulse that it gave is 
not yet spent ; the old have not yet forgotten the inspiration of 
the scene where they beheld so many accomplished orators pass 
their most glorious hours ; the young cannot hear without a throb 
of emulation the many wonderous things of that proud work of 
their fathers, which was levelled for ha\dng towered too high-; 
nor is the general regret of the bar for its fall unincreased by 
their possession and daily admiration of two noble and still per- 
fect relics, attesting the magnificence of the structure they have 
survived."^ 

Another peculiarity of the Irish bar that is now passing away, 
but which prevailed to a great extent during Mr. Curran's forensic 
career, vras the frequency of collision between the bar and the 
bench. It was often his fate to be involved in them, and many 
are the instances of the promptness of repartee, and of the indig- 
nant intrepidity with which, on all such occasions, he defended the 



* Messrs. Bushe and Plunkett, two of the members of the Irish House of Commons, 
the most distinguished for eloquence, continue at the Irish bar. — C. [This was written in 
1S18. Bushe became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1822, and died in 1843. Plunkett, 
twice Irish Lord Chancellor, died 1S54, a British Peer.— M.] 



JUDICIAL TROIMOTIONS. 65 

privileges of the advocate. It will be presently seen tliat he had 
scarcely appeared at the bar, when be showed how he could 
encounter and triumph over all the taunts and menaces of a hos- 
tile judge. The same spirit of resistance and retaliation wdll be 
found in his contests with Lord Clare ; and at a much subsequent 
period, when he was exerting himself in a cause with his charac- 
teristic firmness, the presiding judge having called the sheriff to 
be ready to take into custody any one who should disturb the 
decorum of his court, " Do, Mr. Sheriff," replied Mr. Curran, " go 
and get ready my dungeon; prepare a bed of straw for me; 
and upon that bed I shall to-night repose with more tranquillity 
than I should enjoy were I sitting upon that bench with a con- 
sciousness that I disgraced it." 

The same political causes that have been already alluded to as 
influencing the oratory of the Irish bar, will, in a great measure, 
account for these conflicts in the courts, and for that tone of sar- 
casm and defiance assumed by the barrister on such occasions. 

It was one of the public calamities of the period when such 
scenes were most frequent, that, in the selection of persons to fill 
the judicial seat, more attention was often paid to family interest 
and political services than to the claims of merit, or the benefit 
of the community. No doubt, it sometimes happened that this 
important office was bestowed upon men, to whom the appoint- 
ment to situations of honour and of trust was less a gift, than the 
payment of the justest debt. "What dignity could be too exalted 
for the learned and accomplished Lord Avonmore ? What trust 
too sacred for Lord Kilwarden, the most conscientious, and pacific, 
and merciful of men?* But if Ireland beheld such persons 

* Arthur Wolfe, son of a country gentleman in Kildare, was born in 1739, became a 
barrister, and soon after, a member of the Irish parliament. In this latter capacity, 
siding with the government, he contended with Flood and Grattan. He was appointed 
Solicitor-General in 1787, Attorney-G&neral in 17S9, and Chief Justice of Ireland in 179S, 
being then created Lord Kilwardeu ; in ISOO was raised to the rank of Viscount, and in 

1802 was made Vicc-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. On the evening of July 23, 

1803 (when Emmctt's insurrection prematurely broke out), Lord Kilwarden was met by a 
band of armed men, in Thomas street, Dublin, who killed him and his nephew by stab- 



C'O LIFE OF CURRAX. 

adorning their station, she bad the anguish and humiliation to 
see others degrading it by their political fury, or by the more 
indecent gratification of their particular animosities. Influenced 
by such unworthy feelings of party or of private hostility, the 
judges, in those days, were too prone to consider it a branch of 
their official duty to discountenance any symptoms of indepen- 
dence in their court; and though at times they may have suc- 
ceeded, yet, at others, indignant and exemplary was the retaliation 
to which such a departure from their dignity exposed them : for it 
was not unusual that the persons who made these experiments 
upon the spirit of the bar, and whose politics and connections had 
raised them to a place of nominal superiority, were, in public con- 
sideration, and in every intellectual respect, the inferiors of the 
men that they undertook to chide. It sometimes happened, too, 
that the parties, whose powers might be less unequal, had been 
old parliamentary antagonists ; and when the imputed crimes of 
the oppositionist came to be visited upon the advocate, it is not 
surprising that he should have retorted with pride, and acrimony, 
and contempt. Hence arose in the Irish Courts those scenes of 
personal contention, which the difierent character of the bench in 
later limes precludes, and which (whatever side gain the victory) 
must be ever deprecated as ruinous to the client, and disgraceful 
to that spot, within whose precincts faction and passion should 
never be permitted to intrude. 

But though the solemnity of judicial proceedings in Ireland 
might have been often disturbed by the preceding causes, they 
have been more frequently enlivened by others of a less unamiable 
description. Notwithstanding the existence there of that religious 
and political bigotry which tends to check every cheerful impulse, 
and, in their place, to substitute general distrust and gloom, these 

baneful effects have been powerfully counteracted by the more 

• 

bing them with pikes. It was supposed that his administration of the Criminal Law, in 
1798, had created enmity to him. Lord Kilwarden, who supported the Union, was an 
eloquent speaker, in the Senate as well as at the bar, and a very eminent lawyer. — M. 



FORENSIC JOCULARITY. 67 

prevailing influence of the national character. The honest kindly 
affections of nature, though impeded, have still kept on their 
course. In spite of all the sufferings and convulsions of the last 
century, the social vivacity of the Irish was proverbial. It sub- 
sisted, as it still subsists, in an eminent degree, in their private 
intercourse ; it may be also seen constantly breaking forth in their 
public discussions. At the bar, Avhere the occasions of jocularity 
so frequently occur, it is, as might be expected, most strikingly 
displayed. The Jrish judges have not disdained to resign them- 
selves to the favourite propensity of their country. The humorous 
sally or classical allusion, which would have pleased at the table, 
has not been frowned upon from the bench ; their habits of social 
intimacy with the bar, and their own tastes as scholars and com- 
panions, have rather prepared them to tolerate, and even join in 
those lively irregularities which the more severe decorum of West- 
minster Hall might condemn. This urbanity and indulgence still 
remains ; and scarcely a term passes over without many additions, 
either from the bar or the bench, to the large fund of Irish 
forensic humour."^'" 

A more frequent and less dignified description of mirth, of 
which so much may be observed in the legal proceedings of 
Ireland, is that which originates in the particular character of the 
lower orders of that country. They abound in sagacity and 
repartee — qualities to which, v>'hen apj^earing as unwilling wit- 
nesses, or when struggling under the difficulties of a cross-exami- 
nation, they seldom fail to fly to shelter. Their answers, on such 
occasions, are singularly adroit and evasive,f and the advocate is 
conseqently obliged to adopt every artifice of humour and ridi- 
cule, as more eft'ectual than seriousness or menace, to extract the 
truth and expose their equivocations. The necessity of employing 



* It is worth noting that the jokes which now amuse judges, counsel, clients, and wit- ] 
nespes, in Courts of Law, are notoriously poor ones. Real forensic fun and wit appear to 

have disappeared. This holds good on both sides of the Atlantic. — M, i 

+ See Mr. Curran's cross-examination of O'Brien, inserted hereafter. — C. i 



68 LIFE or CUERAN. 

such methods of confounding the knavish ingenuity of a witness, 
perpetually occasions the most striking contrasts between the 
solemnity of the subjects, and the levity of the language in which 
they are investigated. It is particularly in the Irish criminal 
courts that scenes of this complicated interest most constantly 
occur, lu the front appear the counsel and the endence in a 
dramatic contest, at which the auditors cannot refrain from bursts 
of laughter, and at a little distance behind, the prisoner under 
trial, gazing upon them with agonized attention, and catching at a 
presage of his fate in the alternating dexterity or fortune of the 
combatants. 

This intrusion of ledty into proceedings that should be marked 
by pomp and dignity may be indecent, but it is ineWtable. With- 
out this latitude of examination, no right would be secure, and, 
when exerted, no gravity can resist its influence ; even the felon's 
visage is often roused from its expression of torpid despair by the 
sallies that accompany the disclosure of his crimes. As long, 
therefore, as the Irish populace retain their present character of 
vivacity and acuteness, the Irish advocate must cultivate and dis- 
play his powers of humour, often, perhaps, to a greater extent 
than his own better taste would desire ; and the courts, aware of 
the necessity of such an instrument for eliciting the truth, will not 
consider it incumbent on them to interfere with its use. 



EARLY EEPUTATION. 69 



CHAPTER IV. 

Mr. Curran's early success at the bar— His contest with Judge Robinson— His defence of 
a Roman Catholic priest— His duel with Mr. St. Leger — Receives the dying benediction 
of the priest — Lord Avonmore's friendship — His character of Lord Avonmore — Monks 
of St. Patrick, and list of the original members — Anecdotes of Lord Avonmore — Mr. 
Curran's entrance into Parliament. 

Mr. Curran lias been frequently alluded to as one of tlie many 
examples in the liistoiy of tne bar, of tlie higliest talents remain- 
ing for a long time unknown and unrewarded. This, however, 
was not the fact : so general was the reputation of his abilities, 
and so numerous his personal friends, that he became employed 
immediately, and to an extent that is very unusual Avith those, 
Vvho, like him, have solely depended upon their owm exertions and 
upon accidental support.* 

The failure of Mr. Curran's first attempt at speaking has been 
mentioned : a more singular instance of that nervousness which 
so frequently accompanies the highest capacity, occurred to him 
upon his debut in the courts. The first brief that he held was in 
the Court of Chancery ; he had only to read a short sentence 
from his instructions, but he did it so precipitately and inaudibly, 
that the chancellor, Lord Lifford, requested of him to repeat the 
words, and to raise his voice : upon this his agitation became -so 
extreme that he was unable to articulate a syllable ; the brief 
dropiwd from his hands, and a friend who sat beside him was 
obliged to take it up and read the necessary passage.f 

* The fact of his early practice appears from his own fee-book, in which the receipts 
commence from the day after he was called to the bar. The first year produced eigtity- 
two guineas, the second between one and two hundred, and so on, in a regularly increas- 
ing proportion. — C. 

t Lord Erskine, on his debut at the English bar, is said to have been equally nervous. 



70 LIFE OF CLliKAN. 

This diffidence, however, totally vanished whenever he had to 
repel w^hat he conceived an unwarrantable attack. It was by 
gixdng proofs of the proud and indignant spirit with which he 
could chastise aggression, that he first distinguished himself at the 
bar : * of this his contest with Judge Robinson is recorded as a 
very early and memorable instance. Mr. Curran having observed 
in some case before that judge, " That he had never met the law 
as laid down by his lordship, in any book in his library," " That 
may be, sir," said the judge, in an acrid, contemptuous tone; 
" but I suspect that your library is very small." His lordship, 
who, like too many of that time, was a party zealot, was known to 
be the author of several anonymous political pamphlets, which 
were chiefly conspicuous for their despotic principles and exces- 
sive violence. The young barrister, roused by the sneer at his 
circumstances, replied that true it was that his library might be 
small, but he thanked heaven that, among his books, there were 
none of the wretched productions of the frantic pamphleteers of 
the day. "I find it more instructive, my lord, to study good 
Avorks than to compose bad ones ; my books may be few, but the 
title-pages give me the writers' names : my shelf is not disgraced 
by any of such rank absurdity that their very authors are 
ashamed to owm them." 

He was here interrupted by the judge, who said, " Sir, you are 
forgetting the respect which you owe to the dignity of the judi- 
cial character." " Dignity !" exclaimed Mr. Curran ; " my lord, 
upon that point I shall cite you a case from a book of some 
authority, with which you are perhaps not unacquainted. A poor 



until (to use his own words) "I thought I felt my hungry little ones pulling my gown, 
and that gave me courage to speak." — M. 

* His first occasion of displaying that high spirit which was afterwards so prominent 
in his character, was at the election of Tallagh, where he was engaged as counsel, a few 
months after his admission to the bar. One of the candidates, presuming upon his own 
rank, and upon the young advocate's unostentatious appearance, indulged in some rude 
language towards him ; but was instantly silenced by a burst of impetuous and eloquent 
invective, which it at that time required an insult to awaken,— C. 



THE RETORT. 71 

Scotchman, ^^ upon bis arrival in London, thinking- himself insulted 
by a stranger, and imagining that he was the stronger man, 
resolved to resent the aftront, and taking oft" his coat, delivered it 
to a bystander to hold ; but having lost the battle, he turned to 
resume his garment, when he discovered that he had unfor- 
tunately lost that also, that the trustee of his habiliments had 
decamped during the aftray. So, my lord, when the person who 
is invested with the dignity of the judgment-seat lays it aside, for 
a moment, to enter into a disgraceful personal contest, it is vain, 
when he has been worsted in the encounter, that he seeks to 
resume it — it is in vain that he endeavours to shelter himself from 
behind an authority which he has abandoned." 

Judge Robinson — If you say another word, sir, I'll commit you. 

Mr. Curran — Then, my lord, it will be the best thing you'll have 
committed this term. 

The judge did not commit him ; but he was understood to have 
solicited the bench to interfere, and make an example of the advo- 
cate by depriving him of his gown, and to have received so little 
encouragement, that he thought it most prudent to proceed no 
further in the aftair.f 

From this, and many other specimens of spirit and ability, Mr. 
Curran's reputation rapidly increased ; but it was not till he had 
been four or five years at the bar that his powers as an advocate 
became fully known. His first opportunity of displaying them 
was in a cause at the Cork Assizes, in which a Roman Catholic 
priest, the Rev. Mr. Neale, brought an action against a nobleman 
of that county (Lord Doneraile), for an assault and battery. 

* Perhaps it is unnecessary to remind most readers, that the Scotchman alluded to is 
Strap, in Smollett's Roderic Random. — C. [Mr. O'Regan relates this reply to Judge 
Robinson as having been made, not by Curran, but by Mr. Hoare, his friend and 
cotemporary. — M.] 

tAs a companion to this anecdote, let me mention that, once upon a time, when a 
gigantic and ignorant barrister who had been wounded by some of the shafts of Curran's 
wit, half seriously threatened to put him in his pocket — Curran being of stunted stature 
and size— the quick retort was, " Do ! and then you'll have more law in your pocket than 
you ever had in your head !" — M. 



715 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

The circumstances attending* this case mark the melancholy 
condition of the times. They aftbrd a single, but a very striking 
example of those scenes of local despotism and individual sufler- 
ing, of which, at this degraded period, Ireland ^Yaa daily the wit- 
ness and the \-ictim. 

The nobleman in question had contracted an intimacy with a 
young woman, whose family resided in the parish of which the 
plaintiff in this action was the priest. This woman's brother hav- 
ing committed some offence against religion, for which the Roman 
Catholic Bishop of the diocese had directed that the censures of 
the church should be passed upon him, she solicited Lord Done- 
raile to interfere, and to exert his influence and authority for the 
remission of the offender's sentence. His lordship, without hesi- 
tation, undertook to interpose his authority. For this purpose he 
proceeded, accompanied by one of his relatives, to the house, or 
rather cabin, of the priest. As soon as he arrived there, disdain- 
ing to dismount from his horse, he called in a loud and imperious 
tone, upon the inhabitant to come forth. The latter happened at 
that moment to be in the act of prayer ; but, hearing the voice, 
which it would have been perilous to disregard, he discontinued 
his devotions to attend upon the peer. The minister of religion 
appeared before him (an affecting spectacle, to a feeling mind, of 
infirmity and humility), bending under years, his head uncovered, 
and holding in his hand the book which was now his only source 
of hope and consolation. His lordship ordered him to take off 
the sentence lately passed upon his favourite's brother. The priest, 
struggling between his temporal fears and the solemn obligations 
of his church, could only reply, with respect and humbleness, that 
he would gladly comply with any injunction of his lordship, but 
that to do so in the present instance was beyond his power ; that 
he was only a parish priest, and, as such, had no authority to remit 
an ecclesiastical penalty imposed by his superior ; that the Bishop 
alone could do it. To a second and more angry mandate, a simi- 
lar answer was returned, upon which the nobleman, forgetting 



FATHER KE ale's CASE. 73 

what he o-sved to his own dignity, the pity .and forbearance due 
to age, and the reverence due to religion, raised his hand against 
the unoffending old man, who could only escape the blov/s directed 
against his person by tottering back into his habitation, and secur- 
ing its door against his merciless assailant. 

For this disgraceful outrage, to which the sufferer was exposed, 
because he would not violate the sanctity of his own character, 
and the ordinances of his church, for the gratification of a profli- 
gate woman, who chanced to be the mistress of a peer, he for some 
time despaired of obtaining redress. So great was the pro\ancial 
power of this nobleman, and such the political degradation of the 
Roman Catholic clergy, that the injured priest found a difficulty in 
procuring an advocate to plead his cause. At length, several to 
whom he applied having (according to the general report) declined 
to be concerned for so unpopular a client,* Mr. Curran justly con- 
ceiving that it would be a stain upon his profession if such scenes 
of lawless violence were allowed to pass without investigation, took 
a step which many considered as most romantic and imprudent, 
and only calculated to baffle all his prospects upon his circuit ; he 
tendered his services to the unfriended plaintiff, and, the unexpected 
offer being gratefully accepted, laid the story of his unmerited 
wrongs before a jury of his country. 

No printed report of this trial has been preserved, but all the 
accounts of it agree that the plaintiff's counsel* acquitted himself 
with eminent ability. And it is only by adverting to the state of 
those times that we can appreciate the ability that could obtain 
success. This was not, as an ordinary case, between man and 
man, where each may be certain of an equitable hearing. The 
advocate had to address a class of men who were full of furious 

*In 1735, a Catholic nobleman (Lord Clancarty) brought an ejectment to recover his 
family estates that had been confiscated, but by a resolution of the Irish House of Com- 
mons, all barristers, solicitors, attorneys or proctors, that should be concerned for him, 
were voted public enemies {O^Connor''s History of t7ce Jris7i Catholics, p. 218:) and in 
Ireland the prejudices, which had dictated so iniquitous a measure, were not extinct in 
17S0.-C. 

4 



i-i LIFE OF crrjiAx. 

and inveterate prejudices against his client. The very appearance 
of a Roman CathoUc clergyman, obtruding his wrongs upon a 
court of justice, was regarded as a presumptuous novelty. To the 
minds of the bigoted jurors of that day, his demand of redress 
Avas an act of rebellion against the Protestant ascendency — a 
daring effort to restore a deposed religion to its throne. The 
cause had also, from the characters of the parties, excited 
the greatest public interest, and the sympathy of the public, 
as is always the case when no epidemic passions intervene, 
was upon the side of the oppressed ; but the general expres- 
sion of such a feeling was rather detrimental to its object. The 
crowds that filled and surrounded the court, upon the day of trial, 
were Roman Catholics, and were supposed, by a very obvious 
construction, to have assembled, not so much to witness a triumj^h 
of justice, as to share in a triumph of their religion. Upon such 
an occasion, the advocate had not merely to state the fact and 
apply the law; before he could convince or persuade, he had 
to pacify — to allure his hearers into a patient attention, and 
into a reversal of the hostile verdict, which, before they were 
sworn, they had tacitly pronounced. These were the difficul- 
ties against which Mr. Curran had to contend, and Avhich he 
overcame. The jury granted a verdict to his client, with thirty 
guineas damages. So small a sum would now be deemed a 
very paltry remmieration for such an injury ; but in Ireland, 
abo.ut seventy years ago, to have wrung even so much from a 
Protestant jury, in favour of a Catholic priest, against a 
Protestant nobleman, was held to be such a ti'iumph of forensic 
eloquence, and to be in itself so . extraordinary a circumstance, 
that the verdict was received by the people at large as an impor- 
tant political event. 

In a part of his address to the jury in this case, the plain- 
tiff''s counsel animadverted, with the utmost severity of invective, 
upon the unworthy conduct of the defendant's relative (Mr. St. 
Leger), who had been present, and countenancing the outrage 



ME. ST. LEGEK. 75 

upon the priest.'''' At length, his zeal and indignation liurrying 
him beyond his instructions, he proceeded to describe that 
gentleman (who had lately left a regiment that had been ordered 
on actual service), as '' a renegade soldier, a drumraed-out 
dragoon, who wanted the courage to meet the enemies of his 
country in battle, but had the heroism to redeem the ignominy of 
his flight from danger, by raising his arm against an aged 
and unoftending minister of religion, who had just risen from 
putting up before the throne of God a prayer of general interces- 
sion, in which his heartless insulter was included. 

As soon as the trial was over, he was summoned to make 
a public apology for those expressions, or to meet Mr. St. Leger 
in the field. lie was fully sensible that his language had 
not been strictly warrantable, and that a barrister had no right to 
take shelter under his gown from the resentment of those whose 
feelings and character he might have unjustifiably attacked ; but 
perceiving that an apology would, in the eyes of his countrymen, 
liave tarnished the lustre of his recent victory, and that it might 
have the eftect of inviting future challenges whenever he should 
perform his duty with the necessary boldness, he deemed it 
more eligible to risk his life than his reputation.f A duel 



* There was another circumstance during this trial which had given equal offence, and 
which, whatever judgment may be passed upon it now, was well calculated to influence 
the jurj'. Mr. Curran knew that Mr. St. Leger was to be produced as one of the defen- 
dant's witnesses, and it was in order to diminish the weight of his testimony, that he had 
described lilra as above. He had, however, mentioned no name, but merely apprised the 
jury that such a character might be brougl^t to impose upon them. When Mr. St. Leger 
came upon the table, and tools the Testament in his hand, the plaintiff's counsel, in a tone 
of affected respect, addressed him saying, " Oh, Mr. St. Leger, the jury will, I am sure, 
believe you without the ceremony of swearing you ; you are a man of honour, and of 
high moral principle ; your character will justify us from insisting on your oath." The 
witness, deceived by this mild and complimentary language, replied with mingled sur- 
prise and irritation, "I am happy, sir, to see you have changed the opinion you enter- 
tained of me when you were describing me awhile ago." " What, sir ! then you confess 
it was a description of yourself! Gentlemen, act as you please, but I leave it to you to 
say whether a thousand oaths could bind the conscience of such a man as I have just 
described." 

t When each had taken his ground, Mr. iSt. Leger called out to his adversary to fire: 



76 LIFE OF CUERAX. 

accordingly followed ; upon whicli occasion Mr. Curran not only 
established for himself a character for personal intrepidity (an 
acquisition of no small moment in a country Avhere the point of 
honour has always been so sacredly observed), but afforded 
infinite entertainment to the bystanders, by a series of those 
sportive saUies, which, when the impulse was on him, no time or 
place could repress. He declined returning Mr. St. Leger's fire ; 
so that the aftair, after a single shot, was terminated. 

A more solemn and interesting scene soon followed. The poor 
priest was shortly after called away to another w^orld. When he 
found that the hour of death was at hand, he earnestly requested 
that his counsel, to whom he had something of importance to 
communicate, might be brought into his presence. Mr. Curran 
complied, and Avas conducted to the bed-side of his expiring client. 
The humble servant of God had neither gold nor silver to bestow ; 
but what he had, and what with him was above all price, he gave — 
the blessing of a dying Christian upon him who had emploj-ed his 
talents, and risked his life, in redressing the wrongs of the minister 
of a proscribed religion. He caused himself to be raised, for the 
last time, from his pillow, and, placing his hands on the head of 
his young advocate, pronounced over him the formal benediction 
of the Rom.an Catholic Church, as the reward of his eloquence 
and intrepidity. Mr. Curran had also the satisfaction of being 
assured by the lower orders of his countrymen, that he might now 
fight as many duels as he pleased, without apprehending any dan- 
ger to his person — an assurance which subsequently became a 
prophecy, as far as the event could render it one. 

Shortly after this trial, the successful orator was given to under- 
stand that his late triumph should cost him dear. As he was 



•' No, sir," replied he, "I am here by your invitation, and you must open the ball." A 
little after, Mr. Curran, observing the other's pistol to be aimed wide of its mark, called 
out in a loud voice, " Fire !" St. Leger, who was a nervous man, started, and fired : and 
having died not long after, was reputed in Munster to have been killed by the report of 
his own pistol. — C. 



Ills riiACTICE INCREASES. 77 

standing amidst a circle of his friends in one of the pnbhc streets 
of Cork, he was called aside by a person who brought him an 
intimation from Lord Doneraile, that in consequence of his late 
unprecedented conduct, he might expect never to be employed in 
iiiture in any cause where his lordship, or his extensive connec- 
tions, should have the power to exclude him. The young bar- 
rister answered, with contemptuous playfulness, and in a voice to 
be overheard by every one : " My good sir, you may tell his 
lordship that it is vain for him to bo proposing terms of accom- 
modation ; for, after what has happened, I protest I think, while I 
live, I shall never hold a brief for him or one of his family," The 
introduction of these particulars may almost demand an apology ; 
yet it is often by little things that the characters of times and 
individuals are best displayed, as (according to an eminent English 
writer) " throwing up little straws best shows which way the wind 
lies." 

Previous to this trial, Mr. Curran's fame and practice had been 
unusual for his standing ; but after his display of eloquence and 
conduct upon this occasion, they increased with unprecedented 
rapidity."^ It was probably, too, with this event that originated 
his great popularity among the lower orders of the Irish — a feel- 
ing which a little time matured into an abounded veneration for 
his capacity, combined with a most devoted attachment to his 
person. Their enthusiasm in this instance can be scarcely con- 
ceived by such as have only witnessed the common marks of 

* The motto to the first carriage he set up on the strength of his fees was, "Per varios 
Casus," on which some person observed that he prudently omitted the latter part of the 
sentence, '■^ per tot discrimina rerum^" which gave him, he said, a better opinion of his 
judgment than he was otherwise inclined to entertain. It being remarked to him that 
he might have still something more appropriate; he answered, " Why, yes, to be sure, 
'■Ore tenus,^ but the herald painter dissuaded me; he did not like the brevity of wit; and 
being ihen engaged about discovering, amidst the bones of the crusaders, armorial bear- 
ings suitable to the motto, I left to him the profit of two syllables, and he counted out the 
letters— a course since, very wisely, I assure you, adopted in Chancery : nay, I rather 
think also by the common law courts; and thus you perceive, my friend, from what small 
sources great rivers begin to flow. God knows they sometimes do inundate without fer- 
tilizing ; but things being so, who can force back thoSe noxious streams ?" — M. 



78 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

respect paid to ordinary favourites of the people. So miicli of his 
life, and so many of its proudest moments were passed in their 
presence, in the courts of Dublin, and on the circuit towns, his 
manners were so unaftectedly familiar and accessible, his genius 
and habits were so purely national, that the humblest of his coun- 
trymen, forgetting- the difference of rank in their many common 
sympathies, fondly considered him as one of themselves^ and cher- 
ished his reputation not more as a debt of gratitude to him than 
as a kind of peculiar triumph of their own. These sentiments, 
which he never descended to any artifices to cultivate, continued 
unimpaired to his death, and will probably survive him many 
years. 

In relating the steps by which Mr. Curran advanced to profes- 
sional distinction, it would be an injustice to omit the support 
which he found in the friendship of the late learned and respected 
Lord Avonmore, then Mr. Yelverton, a leading counsel at the Irish 
bar. This excellent and rarely gifted man had himself risen from 
an humble station, and knowing, by experience, " how hard it is 
to climb," was ever most prompt in encouraging and assisting 
those whom he saw imitating his own honorable example. His 
friendship for Mr. Curran commenced in 1775 (through the father- 
in-law of the latter. Dr. Creagh, between whom and Mr. Yelver- 
ton an old and tender intimacy had subsisted ;) and, with the 
exception of a few intervals of temporary alienation from political 
differences, continued unimpaired to his death.* 

* Mr. O'Regan says, " Barry Yelverton, afterwards Lord Avonmore, probably possessed 
more of the vehemence of masculine intellect than most others of his countrymen. Com- 
prehensive and luminous, of a copious wit andextensive erudition, he was among the 
order of talent which Mr. Curran was to succeed. Lord Clonmel had a coarse jocularity, 
which was received as an useful talent. Mr. Burgh had the majesty of Virgil, and 
Duquery the elegance of Addison, Temple Emmett possessed the vigour of a great and 
original mind ; he was certainly a person of singular natural and acquired endowments ; 
a man who read Coke on Littleton in his bed, as others do Tom Jones or the Persian 
Tales. Of the chaste, accomplished and classic Duquery, it is related on his own autho- 
rity, that he read Robertson on the day before his best displays, to catch his unrivalled 
style, and to harmonize his composition by that of the master of historic eloquence. He 
had also to contend with tlie wit of Mr. Keller, and the unbending stubbornness of Hoare. 



LORD AVONMOKE. 79 

In one of Mr. Curran's latest efforts at the bar/" wo thid him 
fondly turning aside for a moment to indulge his respect for the 
judge and the scholar, and his gratitude to the friend of his 
younger years. The following is the character that he has drawn 
of Lord Avonmore. To strangers it may appear overwrought, but 
those who w^ere familiar with the simple antique grandeur of mind 
that dignified the original, recognise the fidelity of the likeness. 

" I am not ignorant that this extraordinary construction has 
received the sanction of another court, nor of the surprise and dis- 
may with which it smote upon the general heart of the bar. I 
am aw^are that I may have the mortification of being told in 
another country of that unhappy decision, and I foresee in what 
confusion I shall hang down my head when I am told it. But I 
cherish, too, the consolatory hope, that I shall be able to tell them, 
that I had an old and learned friend, whom I w^ould put above all 
the sweepings of their Hall, who was of a difierent opinion — who 
had derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest fountains of 
Athens and of Rome — who had fed the youthful vigour of his 
studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their wisest phi- 
losophers and statesmen — and who had refined that theory into 
the quick and exquisite sensibility of moral instinct, by contem- 
plating the practice of their most illustrious examples — by dwell- 
ing on the sw-eet-souled piety of Cimon — on the anticipated Chris- 
tianity of Socrates — on the gallant and pathetic patriotism of 
Epaminondas — on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom to move 



John Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare, and Lord High Chancellor oif Ireland, was a com- 
petitor whose ardent and energetic decision of character, whose precision of mind and 
legal capacity, rendered him a formidable rival. They did not uniformly run the same 
course of competition ; Mr. Curran was not early qualified to start for the hunter's plate, 
nor had he ever much taste for the Olympics of a Castle chase; for such, he said, he was 
short by the head. Yet Mr. Curran often repeated, that had not the father of Mr. Fitz- 
gibbon pre-occupied the ground for his son, by one stage, he never should or could have 
gone beyond him. But whenever these high-mettled racers started fairly, and on an equal 
plain, Mr. Curran was always first at the winning-post." — M. 

* Speech in the case of Mr. Justice Johnson, in the Court of Exchequer, where Lord 
Avonmore presided.— C. [The date was February 4, 1805.]— M. 



80 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

from his integrity would Lave been more difficult than to have 
pushed the sun from his course. I would add, that if he had 
seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment — that liis hesitation 
was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, and 
liides it from the viev/, and does so for a moment hide it, by- 
involving the spectator without even approaching the face of the 
luminary." 

Lord Avonmore was the person imder whose auspices was form- 
ed, in the year 1779, a patriotic and convi\dal society — "The 
Monks of the Order of St. Patrick,"^ which was in those days 

* Of this society, so interesting as connected with the most splendid era of Ireland's 
history, Mr. Hudson has kindly supplied the following notice and list of the original 
members : 

This celebrated society was partly political and partly convivial ; it consisted of two 
parts, professed and lay brothers. As the latter had no privileges, except that of com- 
mons in the refectory, they are unnoticed here. The professed (by the constitution) con- 
sisted of members of either house of parliament, and barristers, with the addition from 
tlie other learned professions of any number not exceeding one-third of the whole. They 
assembled every Saturday in Convent, during term-time ; and commonly held a chapter 
before commons, at which the abbot presided, or in his (very rare) absence, the prior, or 
senior of the officers present. Upon such occasions, all the members appeared in the 
habit of the order, a Wack tabinet domino. Temperance and sobriety always prevailed. 
A short Latin grace, " Benedictus benedicat," and " Benedicto benedicatur" (since 
adopted as the grace of the King's Inns Society, in Dublin) was regularly and gravely 
pronounced by the priEcentor or chaplain, before and after commons. 

It will be seen by the following list, that there were many learned men and men of 
genius in their number, and I may venture to say, that few productions (either in pamph- 
lets or periodical publications) of any celebrity, during the arduous struggle for Irish 
emancipation, appeared, which did not proceed from the pen of one of the brethren. Nor 
did they forego their labours, till, by their prayers and exertions, they attained emancipa- 
tion for their country. The sad change which has taken place since their dispersion 
need not be related. 

THE 

MONKS OF THE ORDER OF ST. PATRICK. 

COMMONLY CALLED 

THE MONKS OF THE SCREW. 

Assembled at their Coiivent in St. Kevin Street, Dublin, on and after 

September the M, 1779. 

Members^ Names. 

1. i^0M?i(?er.— Barry Yelverton, barrister, M.P., since Lord Viscount Avonmore, Lord 
Chief Baron. 

2. Abbot. — William Doyle, barrister, Master in Chancery. 



MONKS OF TPIE SCREW. 81 

sufficiently celebrated, and composed of men sucli as Ireland could 
not easily assemble now. It was a collection of the wit, the 



3. Prior.— John Philpot Curran, barrister, since M.P., Privy Counsellor and Master of 
the Rolls. 

4. Prcccentor.—RtY. Wm. Day, S. F. T. C. D. 

b. Bui'sar. — Edward Hudson, M.D.* ■] 

6. ASaemto?!.— Robert Johnson, barr. M.P., and since a Judge.* i 

7. Arran, the Earl of, | 

8. Barry, James (painter), elected an honorary member, never joined. • 

9. Brown, Arthur, barr. M.P., and F. T. C. D. \ 

10. Burgh, Walter Hussey, barr., Rt. Hon. and M.P., and since Chief Baron. j 

11. Burston, Beresford, barr., and K. C* j 

12. Carhampton, Earl of. i 

13. Caldbeck, William, barr., and K. C. ' 

14. Chamberlayne, W. Tankerville, barr. M.P., and since a Judge. | 

15. Charlemont, Earl of. 

16. Corry, Rt. Hon. Isaac, M.P., and since Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

17. Daly, Rt. Hon. Denis, M.P. ! 
IS. Day, Robert, barr. M.P., and since a Judge.* \ 

19. Dodds, Robert, barr. ,| 

20. Doyle, Joiin, M.P., and since a General in the army, and Bart.* j 

21. Dunkin, James, barr. 1 

22. Duquerj^ Henry, barr., and M.P. '\ 

23. Emmett, Temple, barr. ^ 

24. Finucane, Matthew, barr., and since a Judge. j 

25. Fitton, Richard, barr. ; 

26. Forbes, John, barr., M.P. 1 

27. Frankland, Richard, barr., and K.C. i 
2S. Grattan, Rt. Hon. Henry, barr., and M.P. i 
29. Hacket, Thomas, barr. i 
SO. Hardy, Francis, barr., and M.P. (Lord Charlemont's biographer.) 

31. Harstonge, Sir Henry, Bart, and M.P. ] 

32. Herbert, Richard, barr., and M.P. • 

33. Hunt, John, barr. ;i 

34. Hussey, Dudley, barr., M.P., and Recorder of Dublin. \ 

35. Jebb, Frederic, M.D. 1 

36. Kingsborough, Lord Viscount, M.P. [afterwards Earl of Kingston.] ^ 

37. Mocawen, ■ , barr. ! 

8S, Martin, Richard, barr., and M.P. : 

39. Metge, Peter, barr., M.P., and since a Judge. ; 

40. Mornington, Earl of [the late Marquis Wellesley.] [ 

41. Muloch, Thomas, barr. .; 

42. Newenham, Sir Edward, M.P. ] 

43. Ogle, Rt. Hon. George, M.P. | 

» Surviving.— C. [In 1819].— M. 

4* 



82 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

genius, and public virtue of the country ; and though the name of 
the society itself is not embodied in any of the national records, 

44. O'Leary, Rev. Arthur, honorary. 

45. O'Neal, Charles, barr., K.C., and M.P. 

46. Palliser, the Rev. Doctor, chaplain. 

47. Pollock Joseph, barr. 

48. Ponsonby, Rt. Hon. George, barr., M.P., and since Chancellor of Ireland. 

49. Preston, "William, barr. 

50. Ross, Lieut. Col. M.P. 

51. Sheridan, Charles Francis, barr., M.P., and Secretary at War. 

52. Smith, Sir Michael, Bart, barr., M.P., and since Master of the Rolls. 

53. Stawel, 'Williani, barr. 

54. Stack, Rev. Richard, F.T.C.D. 

55. Townshend, Marquis of.* 

56. "\Voolfe, Arthur, barr., M.P., and since Lord Viscount Kilwarden, Chief Justice King's 
Bench. 

The society dwindled away towards the end of the year 1795. 

Shortly after the formation of this club, Mr. Curran, having been one evening called 
upon for a song, gave one of his own composition, which was immediately adopted as the 
charter song of the order. The following are all the verses of it that have been recollected. 

When St. Patrick this order established. 

He called us the " Monks of the Screw;" 
Good rules he revealed to our Abbot 

To guide us in what we should do. 
But first he replenished our fountain 

With liquor, the best in the sky ; 
And he swore, on the word of a saint, 

That the fountain should never run dry. 

Each year, when your octaves approach, 

In full chapter convened let me find you ; 
And, when to the convent you come, 

Leave your favorite temptation behind you. 
And be not a glass in your convent. 

Unless on a festival, found ; 
And, this rule to enforce, I ordain it 

One festival all the year round. 

My brethren, be chaste, till you're tempted ; 

Whilst sober, be grave and discreet ; 
And humble your bodies with fasting, 

As oft as you've nothing to eat. 

* Elected, proffsseJ, and joined on Ina visit to Dublin, !ifior h'le vice-royally. 



LORD AVONMOr.E. 83 

the names of many of its members are to be foini(l in every page, 
and mil be remembered, while Ireland has a memory, with grati- 
tnde and pride. The primary object of their association was to 
give her a Constitution, and to nourish and diffuse among her 
people the spirit and intelligence which should render them worthy 
of the gift ; and when the day arrived, as it shortly did, when the 
rights to which they aspired were not to be gained without a 
struggle, the leading members of the " Order of St. Patrick" may 
be seen conspicuous in the post of honour and of danger. Mr. 
Curran always bore a distinguished part in their meetings ; it w^as 
to them, and to the many happy and instructive hours he had 
passed there, that he so pathetically alluded in the fine burst of 
social enthusiasm which immediately follows the passage above 
cited. "And this soothing hope 1 draw from the dearest and ten- 
derest recollections of my life — from the remembrance of those 
Attic nights, and those refections of the gods, which we have spent 
with those admired, and respected, and beloved companions, who 
have gone before us ; over whose ashes the most precious tears of 
Ireland have been shed. [Here Lord Avonmore could not refi-ain 
from bursting into tears.] Yes, my good Lord, I see you do not 
forget them. I see their sacred forms passing in sad review before 
your memory. I see your pained and softened fancy recalling 
those happy meetings, where the innocent enjoyment of social 

Yet, in honour of fasting, one lean face 

Among you I'll always require ; 
If the Abbot should please, he may wear it, 

If not, let it come to the Prior.* 

****** 

Come, let each take his chalice, my brethren, 

And with due devotion prepare, 
With hands and with voices uplifted 

Our hymn to conclude with a prayer. 
May this chapter oft joyously meet, 

And this gladsome libation renew. 
To the Saint, and the Founder, and Abbot, 

And Prior, and Monks of the Screw ! 

• Mr. Doyle, tho Abbot, bad a repiarkably large full face; Mr. Curraa'* was tha very reverse. 



8-1: LIFE OF CURE AN. 

mirtli became expanded into tlie nobler Avarmtb of social virtue, 
and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon of 
man — where the swelling heart conceived and communicated the 
pure and generous purpose — where my slenderer and younger 
taper imbibed its borrowed light from the more matured and 
redundant fountain of yours. Yes, my Lord, we can remember 
those nights without any other regret than that they can never 
more return, for 

" "We spent thera not in toys, or lusts, or wine, 
But search of deep philosophy, 
"(Vlt, eloquence, and poesy. 
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine."* 

Cowley. 

Lord Avonmore was one of those men in whom a rare 
intellect and vast acquirements are found united with the most 
artless unsuspecting innocency of nature. AVhatever the person 
in whom he confided asserted, he considered to be as undoubted 
as if he had uttered it himself. His younger friend, aware of this 
amiable imperfection, used often to trifle with it, and, in moments 
of playful relaxation, to practice harmless impositions upon his 
lordship's credulity. His ordinary artifice was to touch his sensi- 
bility, and thus excite his attention by relating in his presence 
some afiecting incident, and, then pretending to be unconscious 
that his lordship was listening, to proceed with a detail of many 
strange and improbable particulars, until he should be inter- 
rupted, as he regularly Avas, by the good judge's exclaiming, 
"Gracious heavens! sir, is it posssible? I have overheard all those 
most truly amazing circumstances, Avhich I could never have 

* Lord Avonmore, in whose breast political resentment was easily subdued, by the 
same noble tenderness of feeling which distinguished the late Mr. Fox upon a more cele- 
brated occasion, could not withstand this appeal to his heart. At this period (1S05) there 
was a suspension of intercourse between him and Mr. Curran ; but the moment the court 
rose, his Lordship sent for his friend, and threw himself into his arms, declaring that 
unworthy artifices had been used to separate them, and that they should never succeed in 
future.— C. 



FOND OF ANTICIPATING. 85 

believed, if tliey did not come from such good authority." His 
lordship at length discovered the deception, and passing into the 
opposite extreme, became (often ludicrously) wary and incredu- 
lous as to every thing that Mr. Curran stated. Still, however, the 
latter persisted, and, quickening his invention as the difficulties 
increased, continued from year to year to gain many a humour- 
ous triumph over all the defensive caution of his friend. Even 
upon the bench. Lord Avonmore evinced the same superstitious 
apprehension of the advocate's ingenuity, whom he would fre- 
quently interrupt, sometimes in a tone of endearment, sometimes 
of impatience, saying, "*^Ir. Curran, I know your cleverness ; but 
it's quite in vain for you to go on. I see the drift of it all, and 
you are only giving yourself and me unnecessary trouble." Upon 
one of these occasions, the judge having frequently interposed to 
prevent the counsel's putting forward some topic that was really 
relative and necessary to his case, declaring, as often as it was 
attempted, that the tendency of his argument was quite obvious, 
and that he was totally straying from the question, Mr. Curran 
addressed him thus : " Perhaps, my lord, I am straying ; but you 
must impute it to the extreme agitation of my mind. I have just 
witnessed so dreadful a circumstance, that my imagination has 
not yet recovered from the shock." His lordship was now all 
attention. " On my way to court, my lord, as I passed by one of 
the markets, I observed a butcher proceeding to slaughter a calf. 
Just as his hand was raised, a lovely little child approached him 
unperceived, and, terrible to relate — I still see the life-blood 
gushing out, the poor child's bosom was under his hand, when he 

plunged his knife into — into " " Into the bosom of the child !" 

cried out the judge, with much emotion — " into the neck of the 
calf my lord ; but your lordship sometimes anticipates."'^ 

There are no reports of Mr. Curran's early speeches at the bar ; 
but the celerity of his ascent to distinction in his profession, and 
in the public estimation, may be inferred from the date of his 

* Phillips also tells this story, but has worked it up toocli-amatically.— M. 



8G LIFE OF CURRAX. 

entrance into Parliament. He had been only seven years at the 
bar, when Mr. Longfield (afterwards Lord Longueville) had him 
returned for a borough in his disposal.^' At this time boroughs 
were the subject of notorious traffic, and it seldom happened that 
the members returned for them did not bind themselves to remu- 
nerate the patrons in money or in services. There was no such 
stipulation in the present instance ; the seat w^as given to Mr. 
Curran upon the express condition of perfect freedom on his part; 
but ha\dng soon differed from Mr. Longfield on political subjects, 
and there being then no way of vacating, he insisted upon pur- 
chasing a seat, to be filled by any person whom that gentleman 
might appoint ; an arrangement against which, it is but justice 
to add, that Mr. Longfield anxiously endeavoured to dissuade 
him.f 

* The borough of Kilbeggan, for which the other member was the celebrated Mr. Flood. 
It was also about this period that Mr. Curran obtained a silk gown. — C. 

t In the succeeding parliament Mr. Curran also came in, at his own expense, for the 
borough of Rathcormack. — C. 



THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMIVIONS IN" 17S3. 87 



CHAPTER Y. 



The Irish House of Commons, in 1TS3— Slietch of the previous history of Ireland— Effects 
of the revolution of 1CS3— Catholic penal code— System of governing Ireland— Described 
by Mr. Curran— Intolerance and degradation of the Irish parliament— Change of sys- 
tem — Octennial bill — American Revolution — Its effects upon Ireland — The Irish volun- 
teers — Described by Mr. Curran — Their numbers, and influence upon public measures 
— Irish revolution of 17S2 — Mr. Grattan's public services — Observations upon the sub- 
sequent conduct of the Irish Parliament. 

It was at the eventful era of 1783 that Mr. Curran became a 
member of tlie Irish House of Commons* — an assembly at that 
day thronged with groups of original historic characters,! the 

* The manner in which Curran got a seat in Parliament has been thus related, as" well 
authenticated:" Lord Longueville, an Irish peer, with vast property, and large borough- 
interest, wishing to avail himself of Curran's talents, offered him a seat in Parliament. 
Curran replied that his politics were opposed to the party to which Lord L. belonged. He 
was reminded, with a laugh, that patriotism was unprofitable, and that, with a young 
family, his good sense would tell him so. Some time after, one of Curran's friends asked 
him for a frank, and informed him that he was gazetted as member for one of Lord 
Longueville's boroughs. He took his seat, and voted against Lord L.'s friend, the minister. 
In explanation, he said that he entered Parliament independent and unshackled, and that 
so he would remain. At that time, he had saved only five hundred pounds. This money, 
and about twice as much more, which lie borrowed from his friends, he sent to Lord 
Longueville, in payment for his seat.— M. 

t Of some of these, Mr. Grattan (in his answer to Lord Clare's pamphlet, ISOl) has 
given the following masterly sketches, over which he has, perhaps, unconsciously distri- 
buted the noble traits which, if collected, would form the portrait of himself. 

"I follow the author through the graves of these honourable dead men, for most of 
them are so, and I beg to raise up their tombstones as he throws them down ; I feel it 
more instructive to converse with their ashes than with his compositions. 

" Mr. Malona. one of the characters of 1753, was a man of the finest intellect that any 
country ever produced. ' The three ablest men I ever heard were Mr. Pitt (the father), 
Mr. Murray, and Mr. Malone. For a popular assembly, I would choose Mr. Pitt; for a 
privy council, Murray; for twelve wise men, Malone.' This was the opinion which Lord 
Sackville, the secretary of 1753, gave to a gentleman from whom I heard it. He is a 
great sea iu the calm,' said Mr. Gerrard Hamilton, another great judge of men and 
talents ; ' Ay,' it was replied, ' but had you seen him when he was young, you would have 



88 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

vigorous product of unsettled times: great public benefactors, 
great public delinquents, but both of rare capacity and enterprise, 



said he was a great sea in a storm.' And like the sea, whether in calm or storm, he ^cas 
a great productio7i of nature. » 

" Lord Pery.— He is not yet canonized by death ; but he, like the rest, has been canon- 
ized by slander. He was more or less a party in all those measures which the pamphlet 
condemns, and indeed in every great statute and measure that took place in Ireland for 
the last fifty years. A man of the most legislative capacity I ever knew, and the most 
comprehensive reach of understanding I ever saw ; with a deep-engraven impression of 
public care, accompanied by a temper which was adamant. In his tr^iia is every private 
virtue that can adorn human nature. 

"Mr, Brownlow— Sir "William Osborne. — I wish we had more of these criminals. The 
former seconded the address of 17S2, and in the latter, and in both, there was a station of 
mind that would have become the proudest senate in Europe. 

" Mr. Flood, my rival, as the pamphlet calls him : and I should be unworthy the charac- 
ter of his rival, if in the grave I did not do him justice. — He had his faults; but he had 
great powers, great public effect ; he persuaded the old, he inspired the joung; the Castle 
vanished before him. On a small subject, he was miserable : put into his hand a distaff, 
and, like Hercules, he made sad work of it: but give him the thunderbolt, and he had the 
arm of a Jupiter. He misjudged when he transferred himself to the English Parliament ; 
he forgot that he was a tree of the forest, too old and too great to be transplanted at fifty ; 
and his fate in the British Parliament is a caution to the friends of union to stay at home, 
and make the country of their birth the seat of their action. 

" Mr. "Daly, my beloved friend. — He, in a great measure, drew the address of 1779, in 
favour of our trade, that 'ungracious measure;' and he saw, read, and approved of the 
address of 17S2, in favour of our constitution, that ' address of separation.' He visited 
me in my illness, at that moment, and I had communication on those subjects with that 
man whose powers of oratory were next to perfection, and whose powers of understand- 
ing, I might say, from what has lately happened, bordered on the spirit of prophecy. 

" Mr. Forbes — a name I shall ever regard, and a death I shall ever deplore. — Enlight- 
ened, sensible, laborious, and useful; proud in poverty, and patriotic ; he preferred exile 
to apostacy, and met his death. I speak of the dead — I say nothing of the living; but 
that I attribute to this constellation of great men, in a great measure, the privileges of 
your country ; and I attribute such a generation of men to the residence of your Parlia- 
ment. 

" Mr. Burgh : another great person in those scenes which it is not in the little quill of 
this author to depreciate. — He was a man singularly gifted, with great talent, great 
variety — wit, oratory, and logic. He, too, had his weakness ; but he had the pride of 
genius, also, and strove to raise his country along with himself, and never sought to 
build his elevation on the degradation of Ireland. I moved an amendment for a free 
export ; he moved a better amendment, and he lost his place. I moved a declaration of 
rights: 'With my last breath will I support the right of the Irish Parliament,' was his 
note to me, when I applied to him for his support; he lost the chance of recovering his 
place and his way to the seals, for which he might have bartered. The gates of promo- 
tion were shut on him, as those of glory opened." — C. 

Walter Hussey Burgh, thus eulogized by Grattan, merits more particular notice. Called 



ni3 rOLITTCAL FIOHYOR. 89 

and exliibiting in their virtues or their crimes all the turbulent 
energy of the storms that were ag-itating tlieir country. The Irish 
revolution of 1*782, with the memorable acts and deliberations of 
which period the political history of Ireland commences, had just 
taken place ; and, although it preceded by a little time Mr. Cur- 
ran's entrance into Parliament, it still cannot but be adverted to 
as an event which had a powerful influence upon the fortune and 
conduct of his future life. lie was of too ardent a temper not to 
be deeply moved by the circumstances which accompanied that 
measure : he was the tamiUar friend of the eminent Parliamentary 
leaders who had been so instrumental in achieving- it; he had 
witnessed the virtuous struggles and the scenes of civic heroism 
displayed by them, and by the nation, at this arduous crisis ; and 
the impression that they made upon his imagination and his con- 
viction was never after effaced. In order, therefore, fully to com- 
prehend the feelings with which he entered upon his duties as an 
Irish senator, it will be necessary to make a few observations upon 
the condition in which he found his country, and upon that from 
which she had recently emerged. The fervour of his political 
opinions, and his devoted adherence to the popular cause, exposed 
him, at different periods of his life, to no little calumny and 

to the Irish bar, in 1769, he had previously obtained a seat and won distinction in the 
Irish Parliament. In 1772, at the early age of thirty-five, he was placed at the head of 
the Irish bar, as Prime Serjeant, in which he continued for two years, when, siding with 
Grattan against the government, on the question of Ireland's right to a free export trade, 
he resigned his lucrative office. It was restored to him in 17S2, in which year he was 
made Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, declining a proffered peerage. He died the fol- 
lowing year, before he had completed the age of forty. Ireland might well be proud of 
Buch a man, whose persuasive eloquence made an aera at the Irish bar and in the senate, 
equally distinguished for the grace and harmony of his style, and the sweetness and ful- 
ness of his voice : of him it may be said, as of the Greek orator, he xoas the Bee. Burgh 
and Yelverton being both engaged on opposite sides in some great and important cause, 
all the powers of their talents were called forth, as well by the interest the case excited, 
as by a competition for fame. In speaking of the effect of Burgh's oration, Yelverton 
observed to a friend, that he would have been satisfied that he had obtained the victory; 
"But," said he, "when I perceived an old case-hardened attorney sitting in a distant 
corner of the court, and saw the tears silently coursing down his iron cheeks, and these 
wrung from him by the touching eloquence of Mr. Burgh, I confess," said Yelverton, " I 
felt myself vanquished." — M. 



90 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

reproach ; but those who impartially consider the past and cotem- 
porary history of Ireland will find, in every page of it, his excnse, 
if not his most ample justification. 

For centmies Ireland had been in a state of miserable 
bondage ; her history is but the disgusting catalogue of her 
sufferings, exciting to unprofitable retaliation, from which she 
regularly sunk, subdued but untranquilized, into a condition 
of more embittered wretchedness,* with the penalties of rebelhon 
superadded to the calamities of oppression. From the period 
of her annexation to England in the 12th century, down to 
the close of the 17th, she had thus continued, barbarous and rest- 
less ; too feeble and disunited to succeed, too strong, and proud, 
and irritated to despair ; alternating in dreary succession between 
wild exertions of delirious strength and the troubled sleep of 
exhausted fury. It would be foreign to the present purpose 
to enter into the merits of these melancholy conflicts ; to grope 
amidst uninteresting records to ascertain whether Ireland as 
an unruly province deserved her fate, or whether her condi- 
tion was attributable to an inveterate spirit of vindictive domina- 
tion in the English governments. But as we aj^proach more 
modern times, all obscurity on the subject ceases : we find the 
ruling country adopted a formal avowed design of humiHation, 
which, however applauded (as it still continues to be by some) 
under the imposing phrase of the "Avisdom of our ancestors," 
w^as, in reality, founded in much injustice, and, if effects be 
any test, in as much folly ; and after agitating and afflicting the 
kingdom for the last century, seems likely to visit in its con- 
sequences the next. 

It was immediately after the revolution of 1688, that era 
of glory and freedom to England, that Ireland became the 
victim of this systematic plan of debasement. Her adhe- 

*" The slave, that struggles without breaking his chain, provokes the tyrant to double 
it, and gives him the plea of self-defence for extinguishing what at first he only intended 
to subdue." — Jlr. Cu)'ran''8 speech in IToicUoii'ii case. — C. 



ENGLISH MISRULE. 91 

rence to tlie deposed monarch and its result are familiar to 
all. James's party having been crushed, Ireland was treated 
as a conquered countiy, that merited nothing but chastise- 
ment and scorn. This was not the policy of the English king ; 
it was that of the English whigs,* the framers of the Bill 
of Rights, the boasted champions of liberty at home. By these 
men, and by their successors (who, of whatever political denomi- 
nation, agreed with them in their intolerance), was Ireland, 
without shame or pity, dismantled of her most precious rights. 
Laws were made to bind her, without consulting the Irish parlia- 
ment, which, when it remonstrated, was charged with riot 
and sedition, f Ireland's commerce was openly discouraged : 
a code more furious than bigotry had hitherto penned was 
levelled against the mass of the nation, the Roman Catholics. J 
They were successively excluded from the right to sit in 
Parliament, to acquire land, to hold any employment nnder the 
crown, to vote in elections of members of Parliament, to inter- 
marry with Protestants, to exercise religious worship ; in short, 



* " I am sorry to reflect that since the late revolution in these kingdoms, when the 
subjects of England have more strenuously than ever asserted their own rights and the 
liberty of Parliaments, it has pleased them to bear harder on their poor neighbours than 
has ever yet been done in many ages foregoing."— jro/yneuw's Cause of Ireland. This 
little volume, written throughout with a modesty and ability worthy of tlie friend of 
Locke, was formally censured by the English House of Commons. A circumstance that 
preceded its publication is not without interest. Tlie author, apprehensive of any uncon- 
scious bias upon his mind, wrote to his friend for his opinion of some of the arguments ; 
Locke replied by inviting him to pass over to England, and confer with him in person 
upon the subject. Molyneux complied, and after spending, as the account states, and 
as may be well believed, the five most delightful weeks of his life in the society of his 
llustrious friend, returned to Dublin, and published his work. — C. 

t When the Irish Commons, in 1792, claimed the right of originating money bills, they 
were told by the viceroy, Lord Sydney, that " They might go to England and beg their 
majesties' pardon for their riotous and seditious assemblies." — C. 

X " You abhorred it, as I did, for its vicious perfection ; for I must do it justice, it was 
a complete system, full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well composed 
in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted 
for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement 
in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of 
man."— ^wr^e's Letter to Sir IT. Lnngrishe. 



92 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

by a kind of constructive annihilation, " the Laws did not pre- 
sume a papist to exist in the kingdom, nor could they breathe 
without the connivance of government."'* 

This state of national humiliation lasted almost a century. 
Viceroy succeeded viceroy with no other rule of government than 
to continue the system as he found it. A race of subordinate 
ministers sprang up within the land, of no public virtue, no 
expanded thought, utterly unconscious that man can be improved ; 
exhibiting in their heartless measures that practical ferocity for 
which jailors or keepers would be selected, rather than those mild 
and sanative qualities tliat might have soothed the distempers of 
the times. " Hence it is," said Mr. Curran, speaking of this 
period, " that the administration of Ireland so often presents to 
the reader of her history, not the view of legitimate government, 
but rather of an encampment in the country of a barbarous enemy, 
where the object of an invader is not government but conquest ; 
where he is of course obliged to resort to the corrupting of clans, 
or of single individuals, pointed out to his notice by public abhor- 
rence, and recommended to his confidence only by a treachery so 
rank and consummate as precludes all possibility of their return to 
private virtue or to public reliance, and therefore only put into 
authority over a wretched country, condemned to the torture of 
all that petulant unfeeling asperity with which a narrow and 
malignant mind will bristle in unmerited elevation ; condemned 
to be betrayed, and disgraced, and exhausted by the little traitors 
that have been suffered to nestle and grow within it; who make it 
at once the source of their grandeur and the victim of their vices ; 
reducing it to the melancholy necessity of supporting their conse- 
quence and of sinking under their crimes, like the lion j^erishing 
by the poison of a reptile that finds shelter in the mane of the 
noble animal, Avhile it is stinging him to death."| 

Ireland was in those times, in as strange and disastrous a situa- 

* Such was the declaration from the bench of the Irish chancellor in 1759.— C. 
t Mr. Curran's speech in Howison's case. — C. 



THE IRISH TAllLIAMENT. 93 

tion as can well be imagined; her own legislature liating and 
trampling upon her people, and the English government suspect- 
ing and despising both. There may have been sufficient intricacy 
in the minor details of the policy of the time, but tlie leading 
maxims appear in all the clearness of despotic simplicity. They 
were to awe the real or imputed disatfection of the natives by 
means of a harsh domestic administration, and to check any more 
general exercise of power assumed by that administration as an 
intrusion upon the legislative supremacy of England. As far as 
respected internal concerns, the Irish Lords and Commons were a 
triumj)hant faction, despoiling and insulting the remains of a 
fallen enemy : in their relation with England, they were misera- 
ble instruments, without confidence or dignity ; armed by their 
employers with the fullest authority to molest or to crush, but 
instantly and contemptuously reminded of their owai degradation, 
if ever they evinced any presumptuous desire to redress. 

Against so unnatural a system, it is no wonder that the dis- 
countenanced claims of freedom should have no avail. If a 
transient scream was heard among the people, it excited imme- 
diate alarm at home, as ominous of an approaching storm ; '* if 
her voice issued, as it sometimes did, from the Irish Commons, it 
was considered a daring invasion of the rights of a higher power.f 
If the spirit of that House became too unruly for provincial pur- 
poses, the patriotic murmur was quickly hushed by lengthening 
the pension list ; a given number of oppressors was required, and 
while a venal heart was to be had in the market, no matter how 
high the price, the price was paid, and the nation called on (in 
addition to its other burdens) to defray the expenses of its own 
wrongs. 

* Upon the trial of the printer of Swift's celebrated " Letters of a Drapier," the lord 
chief-justice, Whitshed, declared that the author's intention was to bring in the Preten- 
der. — PlowdeiVs History of Ireland^ vol. ii., p. SI. Dr. Lucas, who ventured, in his 
writings, to vindicate the rights of the Irish Conanions, was declared by that House an 
enemy to his country, and obliged to seek for safety in exile, 1747. — C. 

t Vide question of the appropriation of the surplus, lu 1153. — 



94 LIFE OF CUKRAi^'. 

Thus it continued for many years: ^vitli all the miseries of 
despotism without its repose ; commerce extinguished, the public 
spirit broken, public honour and private confidence banished, and 
bigotry and faction alone triumphant. 

Sentiments of wisdom and pity at length occurred to the 
English Cabinet : it began to doubt if the Irish people were so 
incurably furious as their tormentors had represented ; it resolved 
to inquire, and if necessary, to redress. A very little investiga- 
tion proved that never was some merciful interposition more 
opportune ; it was like a visit to some secret cell to rescue the 
victims of imputed frenzy from their inhuman immurers, who 
had chained their persons and traduced their intellects, that they 
might prey upon their inheritance. 

The subject of the first healing measure was the Parliament. 
There was no representation of the people in Ireland ; there Avas 
a House of Commons, which, having no limits to its duration, 
had become a banditti of perpetual dictators.'* The octennial 
bill was passed, and the hardened veterans disbanded.f This was 
not for the purpose of making even a nominal appeal to the sense 
of the nation ; it was to give the Crown an opportunity of 
dispersing that provincial oligarchy Avhose maxims had been so 
ruinous to their country, and of substituting in their place a class 
of more pliant dependants, who might readily accord with the 
purposed lenity of the new system. As a right, or a security for 
a right, which nothing can give a people if they give it not them- 
selves, this act eflfected little. As a diminution of calamity, as a 
transfer from the barbarous dominion of their domestic tyrants 
to the more considerate and enlightened control of the English 
ministry, it had its value. It was received by the nation, who 
have been ever as precipitate in their gratitude as in their resent- 
ments, with transports of enthusiastic and unaccustomed joy ; a 

* And four-fifths of the people were excluded from the elective franchise by the Ist 
Geo, II. c. 9.— C. 
t 1T67, under the administration of Lord Townshend. — C. 



EVE OF I2\DErEXDEXCE. 95 

sig-nal proof, if such were waiitins:, of their loyalty and their 
debasement. 

The Irish House of Commons, however, hegan now to wear in 
some degree the appearance of a constitutional assembly ; not- 
withstanding the political ignominy into which the nation had 
fallen, there still existed in that house a small band of able and 
upright men, who entertained more manly and charitable notions 
of a people's claims than their ungenerous opponents ; and who, 
though they might not possess the power of redressing the imme- 
diate wrongs, were still ever at hand to refute the baneful doc- 
trines that would have sanctioned their continuance. In the 
British senate too (ic should be gratefully remembered) Ireland 
had her advocates ; whose expanded minds, superior to the paltry 
ambition of domination, Avould haye made the noblest use of 
their own privileges, that of liberally imparting them. The con- 
sequence of these better opinions occasionally appeared ; the 
Viceroy was defeated upon some constitutional questions ;* the 
Commons w^ere reprimanded and prorogued; measures full of 
honour to them, and of hope to their country. 

But these were only transitory visitations of spirit ; the effects 
rather of the neo-lio-ence than the weakness of the viceroy. The 
ranks of the opposition were soon thinned by the never-failing 
expedient, and whatever relief was meditated for the Irish, was to 
come in the form of a gift, and not a concession. Relief w^as 
certainly in the contemplation of the English minister (Lord 
North), to what extent it is now immaterial to inquire ; he was 
anticipated by events that were above his control. 

Ireland was now upon the eve of " a great original transaction." 
The American colonies had revolted ; the Irish linen trade with 
those provinces, which had been the principal of Ireland's few 
sources of commercial wealth, instantly vanished ; to this was 

* Among other instances of the increasing spirit of the House of Commons, was their 
repeated rejections of the money bills, because they did not take their rise in that house. 
1T69-C. 



9G LIFE OF CL'KRAX. 

added a general embargo upon the exportation of provisions, lest 
tliey might circuitously reach the insurgents. Universal distress 
ensued. The Commons, for the first time, assumed the attitude 
of representatives of the nation : they addressed the viceroy 
upon the public emergencies with dignity and firmness, and were 
dissolved in 1777. Strenuous measures were taken by the govern- 
ment to secure a majority in the Parliament that followed ; but 
the crisis soon arrived when the destinies of the country were 
transferred to other hands. 

The internal wretchedness of Ireland had been great ; it was 
now aggravated by the danger of war : the regular forces in the 
kingdom exceeded not 5,000 men, the remainder having been 
called off to recruit the army in America. The enemy's fleets, 
superior to that of Great Britain, were careering in triumph 
through the channel, and daily expected upon Ireland's unpro- 
tected coasts. In this emergency, the town of Belfast, haWng 
applied to Government for a military reinforcement, and its requi- 
sition having been answered by an ofter of supply that cannot 
be related with gravity,'^ had the honour of first raising that 
warning voice, which, hushing every baser murmur, awoke the 
nation to confidence and strength. She called upon the citizens 
to arm in their defence. A corps of Volunteers was immediately 
established. The noble example was ardently faflowed by the 
country at large, and Ireland soon beheld starting up with a 
scenic rapidity, a self-collected, self-disci^Dlined body of forty thou- 
sand Volunteers. '' You cannot but remember," said Mr. Curran, 
describing the scene, of which he had been a witness, "that at a 
time when we had scarcely a regular soldier for our defence, 
when the old and young were alarmed and terrified with appre- 
hensions of descent upon our coasts, that Providence seemed to 
have worked a sort of miracle in our favour. You saw a band 
of armed men come forth at the great call of nature, of honour, 

* The answer of the governiuent was, that all the assistance it could afiford was half a 
troop of dismounted horse, and half a company of invalids. — C. 



THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS. 97 

and their country. You saw men of the greatest wealth and 
rank ; you saw every class of the community give up its members, 
and send them armed into the field, to protect the public and 
private tranquillity of Ireland. It is impossible for any man to 
turn back to that period, without reviving those sentiments of 
tenderness and gratitude which then beat in the public bosom ; 
to recollect amidst what applause, what tears, what prayers, what 
benedictions, they walked forth amongst spectators agitated by 
the mingled sensations of terror and reliance, of danger and of 
protection, imploring the blessings of heaven upon their heads, 
and its conquest upon their swords. That illustrious, and adored 
and abused body of men stood forward and assumed the title 
which I trust the ingratitude of their country will never blot from 
its history, ' The Volunteers of Ireland.' "* 

The original object of these associations had been to defend 
the country from foreign invasion. The administration, for- 
getting the loyalty of the proceeding in their affright at so 
unexpected an exhibition of strength and enterprise, beheld 
an enemy already in possession of the land, but affecting to 
countenance what they could not control, they supplied the 
Volunteers with several thousand stands of arms, and looked 
to the return of more tranquil and servile times, to disarm 
and defame them. 

The Volunteers soon swelled into an army of 80,000 men. In 
their ranks appeared the most admired characters in the king- 
dom, animating them with the enthusiasm, and tempering the 
general ardour by all the courtesy, and the high moral dis- 
cipline, that the presence of so many noblemen, and sena- 
tors, and gentlemen, could inspire. They had armed to pro- 
tect the crown — no invader appeared ; another and more pre- 
cious object of protection now remained. Ireland was at their 
disposal, and they unanimously determined that, to consummate 
their work, they should continue under arms until they saw 

t Speech in Hamilton Rowan's case. — C. 

5 



98 LIFE OF CURE AN. 

her free. They resolved "to show, that if man descends, it 
is not in his own jjroper motion ; that it is with labour and with 
pain, and that he can continue to sink only until, by the force 
and pressure of the descent, the spring of his immortal faculties 
acquires that recuperative energy and effort, that hurries him as 
many miles aloft."* 

The demands of the Volunteers were altogether unlike a mere 
sudden ebullition of popular discontent. They were the result of 
deep convictions, the. splendid signs of the improved opinions of 
the age. The example of America was before them, and the cry 
for redress in Ireland was but the echo of that " voice which 
shouted for liberty"f there. The mode of their constitution, too, 
was peculiarly fortunate and authoritative. They were not a 
regular military force, mutinously dictating measures to the state ; 
they were not a band of insurgents, illegal in their orig-in and 
objects. The circumstances of the times had invested the Volun- 
teers Avith a constitutional character. The Government had 
recognized them, and aided their formation ; the House of Com- 
mons voted them a formal declaration of thanks for their public 
services; the people looked up to them with admiration and 
respect, as a brave, united, and zealous body, combining the 
intelligence and moderation of loyal citizens with the influ- 
ence and resources of a powerful army. 

The effects of the firmness and wisdom of their proceedings 
were soon apparent. The demand of the nation for a free trade, 
and the memorable declaration in parliament, ^Hhat no jjower 
on earth, save the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, 
had a right to make laws for Ireland,^''\ were no longer dis- 
regarded. The case of America had just shawn how a struggle 
for principle might terminate. "British supremacy had fal- 
len there like a spent thunderbolt."§ The bigotry, and servility, 

* Mr. Currau's speech in Finnerty's case. — C. t An expression of Mr. Flood's. — C. 
X The words of Mr. Grattan's motion, April 19, 1780.— C. 
§ Mr. Grattan's speech, Nov. 1-3, 1781.— C. 



99 

and disunion, which had so long supported it in Ireland, had for 
the moment disappeared. Ireland declared, and England felt, 
that no other policy remained, " but to do justice to a people who 
were otherwise determined to do justice to themselves."'^" The 
British ministry, whose infatuated counsels had lost America, and 
whose tardiness and insincerity with respect to Ireland had 
been encouraging the spirit of resistance there, were removed, and 
successors appointed with instructions to make such honoura- 
ble concessions as were due to the services, the strength, and the 
just pretensions of the Irish people. The principal restric- 
tions upon the trade of Ireland had been previously taken 
off. Under the Marquis of Rockingham's administration, the 
great leading grievance, that included in its principle so many 
more, was redressed. England resigned her legislative preten- 
sions, and recognized Ireland to be 2. free nation. \ 

This signal event, so justly denominated by Mr. Burke the 
Irish revolution, was the work of the Irish Volunteers. Their 
efforts were powerfully aided by the momentary spirit which they 
infused into the Irish House of Commons. In many of its 
members, the enthusiasm vanished with the occasion ; but there 
remained a few, whose better natures, superior to the control 
of accident, continued to struggle for the public good with 
a constancy, ability, and zeal, which sprang from within them- 
selves. Their merits have been long since recorded : the pre- 
eminent merits of their illustrious leader, now associated with the 
proudest recollections of his country, require new attestation. 
For Mr. Grattan's most splendid panegyric, for the only one 
truly worthy of him, we are to look in what he has himself pro- 
nounced. His public exertions, the monuments of his genius and 
his worth, are preserved ; his historian will have but to col- 

* Mr. Grattan's speech, April 19, 1780.— C. 

tlTS2. — Several important constitutional acts were passed in Ireland during this short 
administration. A habeas corpus act, the repeal of the perpetual mutiny bill, the act 
for the independence of the judges, an act in favour of the Dissenting Protestants. A 
slight relaxation of the penal code had taken place in 1778.— C. 



100 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

lect and refer to tliem, justly confiding, tliat as long as eloquence, 
patriotism, intrepidity, and uncompromising honour are valued in 
public men, the example of Mr. Grattan will remain the subject 
of lasting gratitude and praise.* 

The triumph which Ireland gained in the declaration of 
independence was the triumph of a principle, which, however 
glorious it might have been to those w^ho achieved it, failed 
to confer upon the nation the benefit and repose that the political 
philanthropist fondly anticipated. The spirit of the Parliament 
was exhausted in the single effort — they had emancipated them- 
selves from the control of another legislature; but no sooner was 
the victory obtained, than it became evident that very few of its 
fruits were to be shared .among the people. Great domestic 
abuses still prevailed ; the corrupt state of the legislature ;f its 
consequence, an enormous and increasing Pension List ; and, 

*]Mr. Grattan, like other men of original genius and character, has been many times 
in the course of his memorable career misrepresented and reviled. The following spi- 
rited defence of him against such attacks was made in the Irish House of Commons, by 
his friend, Mr. Peter Burroughs, a gentleman long distinguished for his eloquence in the 
senate and at the bar, and for the unsuspected purity of his public and private life : — 
" I cannot repress my indignation, at the audacious boldness of the calumny, which 
would asperse one of the most exalted characters which any nation ever produced ; and 
that in a country which owes its liberty and its greatness to the energy of his exertions, 
and in the very house which has so often been the theatre of his glorious labours and 
splendid achievements. I remember that man the theme of universal panegyric — the 
wonder and the boast of Ireland, for his genius and his virtue. His name silenced the 
sceptic, upon the reality of genuine patriotism. To doubt the purity of his motives was 
a heresy which no tongue dared to utter. Envy was lost in admiration ; and even those 
whose crimes he scourged, blended extorted conpraises with the murmurs of resentment. 
He covered our {then) unfledged constitution with the ample wings of his talents, as an 
eagle covers her young ; like her he soared, and like her could behold the rays, whether 
of royal favour or royal anger, with undazzled, unintimidated eye. If, according to 
Demosthenes, to grow with the growth, and decay with the decline of our country, be 
the true criterion of a good citizen, how infinitely did this man, even in the moment of 
his lowest depression, surpass those upstart patriots who only become visible when their 
country vanishes !" — C. 

t According to a table of the state of the representation of Ireland, published in 1783, 
out of the 300 members of the House of Commons (viz , for 32 counties, 64 knights ; for 
seven cities, 14 citizens ; for one university, two representatives ; for 110 boroughs, 220 
burgesses), the people returned 81, including the 64 for counties, and the patrons the 
remaining 219.— C. 



THE OPPOSITION. 101 

above all, the exclusion of tlie Roman Catholics from the most 
valuable privileges of the constitution. There were many others 
of subordinate importance. From Mr. Curran's entrance into 
Parliament, he joined those whose opinion it was that these 
abuses should be corrected. The result of the exertions of him- 
self and the party with which for the fourteen years that he 
was a senator, he acted, is shortly told. They almost uni- 
formly failed in every measure that they brought forward or 
opposed. It would far exceed the limits and the objects of 
this work to discuss at any length the merits of these seve- 
ral measures, some of which continue to this day the subject of 
anxious controversy upon another and a greater theatre. Yet 
it may be observed, that the acts of the Irish legislature during 
the period in question afford matter, if not of a very attractive 
kind, at least of very solemn and important instruction. Who- 
ever takes the pains to examine them will find how transi- 
tory, and almost valueless to a nation the glory of asserting nomi- 
nal rights, if there be not diffused throughout its various classes 
that fund of conservative virtue and spirit, which alone can give 
dignity and stability to its independence, by operating as a perpe- 
tual renewal of its claims. He will find one practical and terri- 
ble example (illustrated by continued discontents and disturb- 
ances, and finally by a rebellion) of the folly of expecting that 
human beings, in whom the political passions have been once 
awakened, can be attached, or even reconciled, to the most 
admired form of government, by any other means, than by a real 
and conscientious communication of those privileges, for which 
they would deem it dishonorable not to thirst. For the last 
eighteen years of her separate existence, Ireland was in the theo- 
retic enjoyment of the same constitution which has long made 
Great Britain the wonder of other nations ; but in Ireland, how- 
ever boasted the acquisition, it soon appeared to be but a lifeless 
copy, minutely exact in external form, but wanting all the vigour, 
and warmth, and imparting spirit of the glorious original. The 



102 LIFE OF CURE AN. 

Irish legislature, seduced by their fatal ardour for monopoly, 
would not see that their own emancipation had sent abroad 
a general taste for freedom, which it was most perilous to disap- 
point. Unwisely and ungenerously separating their interests and 
pride from those of their country, they preferred taking a weak 
and hostile position upon the narrow ground of exclusive privi- 
lege, instead of taking their stand, where there was ample space 
for the parliament and people, and for all, upon the base of the 
British constitution.* They aflected to think that the time 
had not arrived when the Catholic could be trusted ; as if 
the enjoyment of rights and confidence for a single year would 
not prove a more instructive school of fidelity than centuries of 
suspicion and exclusion. But in reality it does not appear from 
the transactions of those times, that the minds of the excluded 
Catholics were less matured for all the responsibilities of indepen- 
dence than those of the Irish aristocracy, upon whom alone 
the recent revolution had confered it. The 80,000 Volunteers, 
who had been the instruments of that independence, were not a 
Protestant association. The depreciated Catholic was in their 
ranks, adding the authority of his strength, his zeal, and his 
moderation, to the cause of the Irish Parliament, and not 
unreasonably confiding, that in the hour of victory his ser- 
vices would be remembered. These services and claims were, 
however, forgotten ; and here it is that the Irish legislature 
will be found utterly unworthy of that controlling powder Avhich 
they had lately acquired over the destinies of their country — in 
abandoning, as they did, a proud, irritated, and robust population, 
to all the contingent suggestions and resources of their indigna- 



* "I have read," said Mr. Curran, speaking of these unpopular maxims of the Irish 
Parliament, "I have read the history of other nations. I have read the history of 
yours. I have seen how happily you emerged from insignificance and obtained a con- 
stitution. But when you washed this constitution with the waters which were to render 
it invulnei'able, you forgot that the part by which you held it was untouched by the 
immersion; it was benumbed and not rendered invulnerable, and should therefore 
attract your nicest care."— Insh Far. Beb. 17S7. 



THE LEGISLATUEE AND THE EXECUTIVE. 103 

tion — in not having " interposed the Constitution," to save the 
State. 

But the point of ^iew, in which a regular history of the latter 
conduct and character of the Irish House of Commons would 
supply matter of no ordinary interest to a lover of the British. 
Constitution, is in the example which it would afford, of an assem- 
bly, founded upon the model of that constitution, exhibiting itself 
in its stage of final deterioration. In Ireland the prediction of 
Montesquieu^ has been verified — not in all its dismal extent, for 
Irish independence has found an eitthariasia peculiar and acciden- 
tal ; but still the spectacle of legislative immorality, and its instruc- 
tive warnings, are the same. The corrupted Commons of Ireland 
surrendered all that was demanded — all that a few years before 
they had gloried in having acquired ; and if a valuable portion of 
their country's rights and hopes was not included in the sale, the 
praise of having respected them is due to the wisdom and mercy 
of the purchasers, and not to any honourable reluctance on the 
side of the mercenary sellers. In whatever light the Act of Union 
be viewed, in its ultimate consequences to the empire, the assembly 
which perpetrated it must be considered as having reached the 
farthest limits of degeneracy ; because tbe terms on which they 
insisted have stamped upon them a character of political dishonour 
that disdained every control of compunction or of pride. For if 
the surrender to which they consented was regarded by them as a 
sacrifice of Ireland's rights, how enormous and unmitigated the 
delinquency! — or if, on the other hand, they imagined it to be 
essential to the welfare of the empire, how vile and fallen that 
spirit which could degrade a necessary act of state into a sordid 
contract ! The Parliament that could do this had no longer any 
morals to lose — and therefore it is, that the constitutional English- 
man, who is labouring to procrastinate the fulfilment of the pro- 
phecy that impends over his own hitherto more fortunate country, 

* " That the British Constitution would not survive the event of the legislative powor 
bee jming more corrupt than the executive." — Spirit of Laws. 



104 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

is referred for abundant illustrations of the apprehended crisis to 
the decline and fall of the Irish Legislature. In contemplating 
that scene, he will have an opportunity of obsernng the great 
leading symptoms, and (which may equally deserve his attention) 
of discerning the minute, but no less unerring signs which portend 
that the spirit which gives it life is about to depart from the repre- 
sentative body ; and should it ever be his calamity to witness, what 
he will find Ireland was condemned to see, the members of that 
body betrapng, by their conduct and language, that they held 
their station as a portion of their private property, rather than as 
a temporary, public trust — should he observe a general and insa- 
tiate appetite for power, for the sake of its emoluments and not 
its honours — should he see, as Ireland did, grave and authenticated 
charges of public delinquency answered by personal menaces, or 
by most indecent ridicule — skilful duellists and jesters held in 
peculiar honour — public virtue systematically discountenanced, by 
imputing its profession to a factious disappointed spirit — should he 
see, within the walls of the Commons' assembly, a standing bri- 
gade of mercenaries, recognising no duty beyond fidelity to their 
employers, the Swiss defenders of any minister or any principle — 
should he, lastly, observe a marked predilection for penal restraints, 
an unseemly propensity to tamper with the Constitution, by expe- 
rimental suspensions of its established usages — should English- 
men ever find all, or many of these to be the characteristics of the 
depositories of their rights, let them remember the prediction of 
the philosopher, and the fate of Ireland, and be assured that their 
boasted securities are becoming but a name. 

But to record at length the progress of that fate, to dwell in 
any detail upon the various characters, and the various induce- 
ments (whether of hope, terror, avarice, ambition, or public duty) 
of the men who accelerated, and of those who would have averted 
the catastrophe, might well be the subject of a separate and a 
very considerable work. It will be suflBcient for the purposes of 
Mr. Curran's histoiy to have made these cursory allusions to the 



HIS PAKLIAMENTAiiY SPEECHES. 105 

spirit of the times in which he acted, leaving more ample devel- 
opments of it to himself, in the specimens of his eloquence that 
will be found in the following pages. 

Mr. Curran's Parliamentary speeches have been always, and 
justly, considered as inferior to his displays at the Bar. To this 
deficiency many circumstances contributed. Depending solely 
upon his profession for support, he was not only seldom able to 
give an undivided attention to the questions that were brought 
before the senate, but he perpetually came to the discussion of 
them, exhausted by the professional labours of the day. The 
greater number of the important questions that emanated from 
the Opposition v^ere naturally introduced by the older leaders of 
that party ; while he, whose talents were most powerful in reply, 
was reserved to combat the arguments of the other side. The 
debates, upon these occasions, were in general protracted to a very 
late liour, so that it often happened, when Mr. Curran rose to 
speak, that the note-takers were sleeping over their task, or had 
actually quitted the gallery. But, most of all, the same careless- 
ness of fame, which has left his speeches at the Bar in their pre- 
sent uncorrected state, has irretrievably injured his Parliamentary 
reputation. While other members sat up v/hole nights retouching 
their speeches for publication, he almost invariably abandoned his 
to their fete, satisfied with having made the exertion that his 
sense of duty dictated ; and deeming it of little moment that what 
had failed of success within the house should circulate and be 
applauded without.* 

Notwithstanding these disadvantages, however, his career in 
Parliament supplies much that is in the highest degree honourable 
to his talents, spirit, and public integrity ; of which the leading 
examples shall be adverted to as they occur in the order of time. 

* Another circumstance contributed greatly to the inaccuracy of the reported speeches 
of such opposition members as would not take the pains of correcting them. The most 
skilful note-takers, of whom the number was very small, were in the service of the Gov- 
ernment, and considered it a part of their duty to suppress whatever it might not be 
agreeable to the Administration to see published. — C. 

5* 



106 LIFE OF CURRAN, 



CHAPTER VI. 

Mr. Flood's plan of Parliamentary Reform — Mr. Curran's contest and duel with Mr. Fitz- 
gibbon (afterwards Lord Clare) — Speech on Pensions — His professional success — Mode 
of life — Occasional verses — Visits France — Letters from Dieppe and Rouen — Anecdote 
— Letters from Paris — Anecdote — Letter from Mr. Boyse — Anecdote of Mr. Boyse — Let- 
ters from Holland . 

The first occasion upon-whicli Mr. Curran's name appears in 
the Parliamentary register, is in the tempestuous debate of 
November 29, 1783, upon Mr. Flood's proposition for a Reform 
in Parliament.* The Convention of Volunteers, by whom Mr. 
Flood's plan had been approved, was still sitting in Dublin. About 
four o'clock in the afternoon of the 29th of November, that 
gentleman rose in the Convention, and proposed that he, accom- 
panied by such members of Parliament as were then present, 
sliould immediately go down to the House of Commons, and 
move for leave to bring in a bill exactly corresponding with the 
plan of reform approved of by them, and that the Convention 
should not adjourn till the fate of his motion was ascertained. 
Lord Charlemont's biographer, who, apparently with much 
reason, condemns the violence of this proceeding, describes the 
scene in the House of Commons as terrific : several of the 
minority, and all the delegates from the Convention, appeared in 
their military uniforms. As to the debate, "it was uproar, it was 
clamour, violent menace, and furious recrimination."! In the 
little that Mr. Curran said, he supported Mr. Flood's motion.^ 

* This is an error. Cumin's name first appears in the Parliamentary Debates on 
November 12, 17S3, when he briefly objected to the issue of a new writ for Enniscarthy. 
Again, on November IS, he casually recommended immediate attention to the claims of 
some distressed manufacturers. Mr. Curran, as member for the borough of Kilbeggan, 
was then colleague of Henry Flood. — M. 

t Hardy^s Life of Lord Charlemoiit, page 270, where the particulars of this interest- 
ing scene are very strikingly detailed. — C, 

% Barry Yelverton, then Attornej'-Qeneral, had made a damaging speech against 



PERSONAL VINDICATION. 107 

In the following montli lie spoke more at length in prefacing a 
motion on the right of the House of Commons to originate 
money bills ; but as neither this, nor any of his parliamentary 
speeches during the session of 1783 and 1784, contain much 
that is remarkable, it would be unnecessarily swelling these pages 
to dwell upon them in detail. 

. [Some notice of Curran's early parliamentary career may not 
be quite uninteresting. On December 16, 1783, on moving 
"that it is the sole and undoubted privilege of the Com- 
mons of Ireland to originate all bills of supply and grants 
of public money, in such manner, and with such clauses as 
they shall think proper," Curran spoke at some length, declar- 
ing that he svas no party man, and entering into a history of 
the right of the Commons to originate and frame money-bills. 
He said, " I lament that a learned and honourable member, with 
Avhom I once had the pleasure of li\dng on terms of friendship, 
is i«)w absent ; because I think I might rely upon his supporting 
the resolution I intend to propose ; that support would, perhaps, 
renew the intercourse of our friendship, which has been lately 
interrupted. And I must beg the indulgence of the House to 
say, that that friendship was upon the footing of perfect equality, 
not imposed by obligation on the one side, or bound by gratitude 
by the other ; for I thank God, when that friendship commenced, 
I was above receiving obligations from any man, and therefore, our 
friendship, as it was more pure and disinterested, as it depended 
on a sympathy of minds, and congeniality of sentiments, I trusted 
would have endured the longer. I think myself bound to make 
this public declaration, as it has gone forth from this House, that 
I am a man of ingratitude, and to declare, that for any difference 



Flood's proposition ; Langrishe, George Ponsonby, Fitzgibbon, Burke, and Hutchinson also 
opposed it. Then weakly but pertly, Hardy (afterwards Lord Charlemont's biographer) 
spoke in opposition, and Curran's speech, in which he cautioned the House not to make 
a public declaration against the Volunteers, was in reply to Hardy. Leave to bring in 
the bill was refused by a large majority ; a counter resolution against interference by the 
Volunteers was then carried : and, soon after, the Convention dissolved. — M. 



108 'LIFE OF CURE AN. 

of opinion with my learned and riglit honorable friend, I cannot 
be taxed with ingratitude ; for that I never received any obliga- 
tion from him, but lived on a footing of perfect equality, save only 
so far as his great talents and erudition outwent mine." 

Leonard MacXally's copy of Curran's speeches, a present from 
Curran himself, contains a note in which it is stated that the 
person thus referred to was Barry Yelverton — but their coolness 
vras of a much later date. Besides, their friendship commenced 
in youth, when neither was in independent circumstances. 

On February 14th, 1785, Curran suj^ported an unsuccessful 
motion of Flood's, that the immediate and effectual retrenchment 
of the national expenses was necessary. On the same day, 
Curran delivered a panegyric on the Volunteers, and personally 
attached Mr. Luke Gardiner, whom he called " the little advocate," 
for voting ministerially, in the hope of being rewarded by being 
raised to a higher rank. (In fact, he was created Lord Mountjoy 
at the Union.) This led to a v^ordy wrangle Avith Gardiner, 
whose defence was undertaken by Fitzgibbon, afterwards Earl of 
Clare, who, assailing Curran as champion of the Volunteers, said, 
" As I feel myself in a very different situation from that honour- 
able member, I shall ever entrust the defence of the country to 
gentlemen, with the King's commission in their pockets, rather 
than to his friends, the beggars in the streets."] 

In the year 1785 took place his quarrel with the late Lord 
Clare, then Mr. Fitzgibbon, the Attorney-General"^ an event which 
deeply afi^ected his future fortunes. During Mr. Curran's first 
years at the bar they had been on terms of polite and even 
familiar intercourse;! but the dissimilarity of their public 
characters, the high aristocratic arrogance of the one, and the 

* John Fitzgibbon was made Solicitor-General on November 9th, 17S3, and on December 
'2Gth, 17S3, succeeded Yelverton as Attorney-General. Tliis latter office he retained until 
he was made Lord Chancellor, on August 12th, 17S9, his place as leading law officer to the 
Crown, being then taken by Arthur Wolfe, afterwards Lord Kilwarden. — M. 

t The first bag that Mr. Curran ever carried was presented to him by Mr. Fitzgibbon, 
f^r <^ood lucVs sake.—C. 



LORD CnANCELLOE CLARE. 109 

popular tenets of tlie other, soon separated tliem ; even tlieir 
private tastes and habits would have foroidden a lasting friend- 
ship. Lord Clare despised literature, in v.diich Mr. Curran so 
delighted. The one in private as in public, disdained all the arts 
of winning ; he was sullen or overbearing, and when he conde- 
scended to be jocular was generally offensive. The other was in 
all companies the reverse ; playful, communicative, and conciliat- 
ing. Mr. Curran never, like his more haughty rival, regulated his 
urbanity by the rank of his companions ; or if he did, it was by 
a diametrically opposite rule ; the more humble the person, the 
more cautiously did he abstain from inflicting pain. For all those 
lighter talents of wit and fancy which Mv. Curran was inces- 
santly and almost involuntarily displaying, Lord Clare had a real 
or an affected contempt, and would fain persuade himself that 
they were incompatible with those higher powers which he con- 
sidered could alone raise the possessor to an equality with him- 
self. Mr. Curran was perhaps equally hasty in underrating the 
abilities of his antagonist. Detesting his arbitrary principles, 
and disgusted with his unpopular manners, he would see nothing 
in him but the petty despot, ascending to a bad eminence by 
obvious and unv.-orthy methods, and therefore meriting his un- 
qualified hatred and invective. 

With such elements of personal dislike and political hostility, it 
is not surprising that when they met they should clash, and that 
the conflict should be violent and lasting. The very destinies of 
the two men seemed to have placed them where their contrasted 
qualities and peculiar force might be most strikingly displayed. 
Lord Clare was fitted by nature to attain power and to abuse it. 
Many men of inferior capacity might have attained as much ; but 
without his resources and perseverance, few could have continued 
so long to abuse it with impunity. Mr. Curran was either io-no- 
rant of, or despised the arts which led to station ; his talent lay not 
in defending doubtful measures or selecting political expedients, 
but in exposing violated trust ; in braving and denouncing public 



110 LIFE OF CURE AN. 

delinquents, in pathetic or indignant appeals to tliose natural ele- 
mentary principles of human rights, against which political expe- 
dients are too frequently directed. lie could never, like Lord 
Clare, have managed a venal, restless aristocracy, so as to com- 
mand their concurrence in a long system of unpopular encroach- 
ments ; nor like him have continued for years to face the public 
reprobation of such conduct: as little could the latter, had he 
sided with the people, have brought to their cause such varied 
stories of Avit and ridicule, and persuasive eloquence, as the 
harangues of his more gifted rival display. 

In a debate on the Abuse of Attachments by the King's Bench, 
in the Irish House of Commons (February 24, 1785), as Mr. Cur- 
ran rose to speak against them, perceiving that Mr. Fitzgibbon 
had fallen asleep on his seat, he thus commenced : " I hope I may 
say a few words on this great subject without disturbing the sleep 
of any right honourable member, and yet, perhaps, I ought rather 
to envy than blame the tranquillity of the right honourable gen- 
tleman. I do not feel myself so happily tempered as to be lulled 
to repose by the storms that shake the land. If they invite rest 
to any, that rest ought not to be lavished on the guilty spirit."* 
Provoked by these expressions, and by the general tenor of the 
observations that followed, Mr. Fitzgibbon replied to Mr. Curran 
with much personality, and among other things denominated him 
a puny babbler. The latter retorted by the following description 
of his opponent : " I am not a man whose respect in person and 
character depends upon the importance of his office ; I am not a 
young man who thrusts himself into the foreground of a picture, 
which ought to be occupied by a better figure ; I am not one who 
replies with invective when sinking under the weight of argument ; 



* Although Mr. Curran appears here to have commenced hostilities, it should be men- 
tioned, that he was apprised of Mr. Fitzgibbon's having given out in the ministerial cir- 
cles that he should take an opportunity, during this debate, in which he knew that Mr. 
Curran would take a part, of putting dcncn the young patriot. The Duchess of Rutland 
and all the ladies of the Castle were present in the gallery to witness what Mr. Curran 
called, in the course of the debate, " this exhibition by command."— C. 



PARLIAMENTARY WORK. Ill 

I am not a man who denies the necessity of a parliamentary 
reform at the' time that he proves its expediency by revihng his 
own constituents, the parish-clerk, the sexton, and grave-digger ; 
and if there be any man who can apply what I am not to him- 
self, I leave him to think of it in the committee, and to contem- 
plate upon it when he goes home." The result of this night's 
debate was a duel between Mr. Curran and Mr. Fitzmbbon ; after 
exchanging shots they separated, only confirmed in their feelings 
of mutual aversion, of which some of the consequences will appear 
hereafter.^^ 

[The first of Gurran's speeches displaying remarkable ability 
(Davis says) is a short one made on Orde's Commercial Proposi- 
tions. Orde,f who was Chief Secretary of Ireland, had proposed 
several resolutions by which Reciprocity would be nominally 
granted to Ireland in trade, commerce, and manufactures, as 
regarded England. In reality, their design was to draw large 
sums from Ireland for " general defence " (of England), in return 
for which the poorer country would be allowed to compete with 
the wealthier and stronger. Curran spoke brielly on the subject 
on June 30, 1785, and, at much greater length, on July 23. He 
spoke again on the 11th and 12th of August — his last speech not 
having commenced until six in the morning, when he declared, 
exhausted as he was, that his zeal had renewed his strength, and 
hoped that his then state of mind and body might not be ominous 
of the condition to which Ireland would be reduced, if the bill 
should become a law. He prophetically said that if England were 
allowed the right of taxing Ireland as she pleased, " we must either 

* When the parties were placed on the ground they were left to fire when they pleased. 
Curran had the first shot, without effect. Fitzgibbon then took aim for nearly half a 
minute, and on his fire being ineffectual, Curran exclaimed, " It was not your fault, Mr. 
Attorney; you xcere deliberate enough.'''' — M. 

t Mr. Thomas Orde had married the natural daughter of the fifth Duke of Bolton, on whom 
her father had entailed the principal part of his large estates, of failure of male heirs to 
his brother Henry, sixth Duke. In 1794, the Dukedom became extinct, by the death of the 
sixth Duke, and, in 1797, Mr, Orde was created Baron Bolton, of Bolton Castle, County of 
York. He died in 1807.— M. 



112 , LIFE OF CUERAN. 

sink into utter slavery, or the people must wade to a re-assumption 
of their rights through blood, or be obliged to take refuse in a 
Union^ ivhich would be the annihilation of Ireland, and 2vhat, I 
susjject, the Ministry is drivirig at.^'' Three days after this, Orde 
withdrew his bill — but, from that hour, Pitt determined to carry 
the Union. 

On March 11, 1*780, Curran spoke on the Portugal Trade, and 
glanced at Toler's (afterwards Lord Norbury) unfortunate " knack 
of turning matters of the most serious nature into ridicule." 
Toler was then at once the buffo and bravo of Ministers.] 

One of the public grievances, which the Irish Opposition fre- 
quently, but vainly, attempted to redress, was the enormity of the 
Pension List. On the 13th of May, in this year (I'lSG), Mr. Forbes 
brought forward a motion upon the subject, which, as usual, 
failed.* A part of Mr. Curran's speech upon that occasion may 
be given as a specimen of the lighter mode of attack to which he 
sometimes resorted where he saw that gravity would have been 
unavailing ; and it may be observed that this, like many more of 
the same kind, are historical documents, which are, perhaps, the 
most descriptive of the times. The very absence of serious 
remonstrance shows that serious remonstrance had been exhausted, 
and that nothing remained but that ridicule should take its ven- 
geance upon those whom argument could not reform. | 

" I am surprised that gentlemen have taken up such a foolish 
opinion as that our constitution is maintained by its different 
component parts, mutually checking and controlling each other. 
They seem to think, with Ilobbes, that a state of nature is a state 
of warfare, and that, like Mahomet's coffin, the constitution is sus- 



. * The debate took place, not in Ifay, but in March. Mr. Forbes's motion was leave to 
bring in a bill to limit the amount of pensions. Sir Hercules Langrishe moved the 
adjournment of the question until August (equivalent to sine die), and it was adjourned, 
but again brought on in the following year. — M. 

t Upon this occasion, Mr. Grattan caused the Pension List to be read aloud by the clerk, 
and concluded his speech by saying, " If I should vote that pensions are not a grievance, 
I should vote an impudent, an insolent, and a public lie." — C. 



THE PENSION LIST. 113 

pended by the attraction of different powers. My friends seem to 
think that the Crown should be restrained from doing wrong by a 
physical necessity, forgetting that if you take away from a man 
all power to do wrong, you at the same time take away from him 
all merit of doing right ; and by making it impossible for men to 
run into slavery, you enslave them most effectually. But if, 
instead of the three different parts of our constitution drawing 
forcibly in right lines at opposite directions, they were to unite 
their power, and draw all one w^ay, in one right line, how great 
would be the effect of their force — how happy the direction of 
their union ! The present system is not only contrary to mathe- 
matical rectitude, but to public harmony: but if, instead of Privi- 
lege setting up his back to oppose Prerogative, he was to saddle 
his back and in\ate Prerogative to ride, how comfortably might 
they both jog along ; and, therefore, it delights me to hear the 
advocates for the royal bounty flowing freely and spontaneously, 
and abundantly as Holywell, in Wales.* If the Crown grants 
double the amount of the revenue in pensions, they approve of 
their royal master, for he is the breath of their nostrils. 

"But we will find that this complaisance — this gentleness 
between the Crown and its true servants — is not confined at 
home ; it extends its influence to foreign powers. Our merchants 
have been insulted in Portugal, our commerce interdicted. What 
did the British lion do ? Did he whet his tusks ? Did he bristle 
up and shake his mane ? Did he roar ? 'No, no such thing ; the 
gentle creature wagged his tail for six months at the court of 
Lisbon ; and now we hear from the Delphic oracle on the trea- 
sury bench, that he is wagging his tail in London to Chevalier 
Pinto, who, he hopes soon to be able to tell us, will allow his lady 
to entertain him as a lap-dog ; and when she does, no doubt the 
British factory will furnish some of their softest woollens to make 

* Sir Boyle Roche, who was a Ministerialist and placeman, had opposed the motion, 
Baying : "I would not stop the fountain of royal favour, but let it flow freely, spontane- 
ously, and abundantly, as Holywell, in Wales, that tui-ns so many mills. Indeed, some 
of the best men have drank of this fountain, which gives honour as well as vigour."— M. 



114 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

a cushion for hiin to lie upon. But though the gentle beast has 
continued so long fawning and couching, I believe his vengeance 
will be great as it is slow, and that that posterity, whose ances- 
tors are yet unborn, will be surprised at the vengeance he will 
take. 

" This polyglot of wealth — this museum of curiosities — the 
Pension List, embraces every link in the human chain, every 
description of men, women, and children, from the exalted excel- 
lence of a Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of a lady 
w^ho humbleth herself that she may be exalted. But the lessons 
it inculcates form its greatest perfection. It teacheth that sloth 
and vice may eat that bread which virtue and honesty may starve 
for, after they have earned it ; it teaches the idle and dissolute to 
look up for that support which they are too proud to stoop and 
earn ; it directs the minds of men to an entire reliance upon the 
ruling power of the State, who feeds the ravens of the royal a^^ary 
that cry continually for food; it teaches them to imitate those 
saints on the Pension List that are like the lilies of the field — they 
toil not, neither do they spin, and yet are arrayed like Solomon in 
his glory : in fine, it teaches a lesson, which, indeed, they might 
have learned from Epictetus, that it is sometimes good not to be 
over-virtuous ; it shows that, in proportion as our distresses 
increase, the munificence of the Crown increases also — in pro- 
portion as our clothes are rent, the royal mantle is extended 
over us. 

" Notwithstanding the Pension List, like charity, covers a multi- 
tude of sins, give me leave to consider it as coming home to 
the members of this house ; give me leave to say, that the Crow^n, 
in extending its charity, its liberality, its profusion, is laying 
a foundation for the independence of Parliament ; for, here- 
after, instead of orators or j^atriots accounting for their con- 
duct to such mean and unworthy persons as freeholders, they will 
learn to despise them, and look to the first man in the State ; and 
they will by so doing have this security for their independence, 



PARLIAMENT AEY STUD. 115 

that while any man in the kingdom has a shilling they will not 
want one. 

" Suppose at any future period of time the boroughs of Ireland 
should decline from their present flourishing and prosperous 
state ; suppose they should fall into the hands of men who wish 
to drive a profitable commerce by having members of parliament 
to hire or let ; in such case a secretary w^ould find a great 
difliculty, if the proprietors of members should enter into a com- 
bination to form a monopoly. To prevent which in time, the 
wisest way is to purchase up the raw material, young mem- 
bers of parliament just rough from the grass ; and when they 
are a little bitted, and he has got a pretty stud, perhaps of 
seventy, he may laugh at the slave merchant. Some of them he 
may teach to sound through the nose like a barrel organ : 
some in the course of a few months might be taught to cry, 
Hear ! hear ! some, Chair ! chair ! upon occasion ; though these 
latter might create a little confusion if they were to forget 
whether they were calling inside or outside of these doors. 
Again, he mi^-lit have some so trained, that he need only 
pull a string, and up gets a repeating member ; and if they were 
so dull that they could neither speak nor make orations (for 
they are different things) he might have been taught to dance, 
2)€dibus ii'e in sententiam. This improvement might be extended ; 
he might have them dressed in coats and shirts all of one coloui*, 
and of a Sunday he might march them to church, two and two, 
to the great edification of the people, and the honour of 
the Christian religion ; afterwards, like the ancient Spartans, 
or the fraternity at Kilmainham, they might dine altogether in a 
large hall. Good heaven! what a sight to see them feeding 
in public, on public viands, and talking of public subjects, for the 
benefit of the public ! It is a pity they are not immortal ; 
but I hope they will flourish as a corporation, and that pen- 
sioners will beget pensioners to the end of the chapter." 

Mr. Curran was now (1786) in full practice at the bar. It may be 



116 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

acceptable to hear the manner he spoke himself of his increasing 
celebrity. The following is an extract from one of his private let- 
ters of this period. 

"Patterson, chief justice of the common pleas, has been given 
over many days, but still holds out. My good friend Carleton 
succeeds him. Had he got this promotion some time ago, 
it might have been of use to me ; for I know he has a friendship 
for me ; but at present his partiality can add little to w^hatever 
advantao-e I can derive from his leavinor about four thousand 
a year at the bar. 

" I midei^tand they have been puffing me off to you from this 
(Dublin). I have been indeed very much employed this term, and I 
find I have the merit imputed to me of changing a determination 
which the Chancellor [Lord Lifford] had formed against Bur- 
roughs,* a few days ago. He has really been uncommonly kind 
and polite to me. This, I believe, is the first time I ever became 
my own panegyrist, therefore excuse it : I shoidd scarcely men- 
tion it for any vanity of mine, if it were not of some little value 
to others; tot it up, therefore, on the table of pence, not on 
the scale of vain glory." 

His life at this time was passed in a uniform succession of the same 
occupations, his professional and parliamentary duties. The intervals 
of business he generally spent at Newmarket, where he had taken a 
few acres of land, and built a house, to which he gave the name of 
the Priory, as the residence of the Prior of the Order of St. Patrick. 
In Dublin the reputation of his talents and his convivial powers 
introduced him to every circle to which he could desire to have 
access ; in the country he entered into all the sports and manners of 
his less polished neighbours, with as much ardour as if it was with 
them alone that he had passed and was to pass his days. The ordi- 
nary routine of his profession, took him twice every year to Mun- 

* Sir William Burroughs, Bart,, afterwards one of the Judges of the supreme court of 
judicature at Calcutta. The cause to which Mr. Curran's letter alludes was that of New- 
berg and Burroughs ; by his exertions in which he had acquired a considerable acces- 
sion to fame.— 0. 



" AT HOME." 117 

ster ;* and among the many attractions of that Circuit, he always 
considered, as one of the greatest, the frequent opportunities it gave 
him of visiting and spending some happy hours with two of his old- 
est and dearest friends (once his college fellow-students), the Rev, 
Thomas Crawford, of Lismore, and the Rev. Richard Cary, of Clon- 
mel ; botli of them persons unknown to fame, but both so estimable, 
as men, and scholars, and companions, that his taste and afiections 
were perpetually recalling him to the charms of their society. 

It may not be a very dignified circumstance in his history, yet 
it must be mentioned that his arrival at Newmarket was always 
considered there as a most important event. Gibbon somewhere 
observes that one of the liveliest pleasures which the pride of man 
can enjoy, is to reappear in a more splendid condition among 
those who had known him in his obscurity. If Mr, Curran had 

* Upon one of these journeys, and about Uiis period, as Mr. Curran was travelling 
upon an unfrequented road, he perceived a man in a soldier's dress, sitting by the road- 
side, and apparently much exhausted by fatigue and agitation. He invited hira to take 
a seal in his chaise, and soon discovered that he was a deserter. Having stopped at a 
small inn for refreshment, Mr. Curran observed to the soldier, that he had committed an 
offence of which the penalty was death, and that his chance of escaping it was but 
small : " Tell me then," continued lie, " whether you feel disposed to pass the little rem- 
nant of life that is left you in penitence and fasting, or whether you would prefer to 
drown your sorrow in a merry glass?" The following is the deserter's answer, which 
Mr. Curran, in composing it, adapted to a plaintive Irish air : 

If sadly thinking, with spirits sinking, 

Could more than drinking my cares compose, 
A cure for sorrow from sighs I 'd borrow, 

And hope to-morrow would end my woes. 
But as in wailing there 's naught availing. 

And Death unfailing will strike the blow, 
Then for that reason, and for a season, 

Let us be merry before we go ! 

To joy a stranger, a way-worn ranger, 

In every danger my course I 've run ; 
Now hope all ending, and Death befriending, 

His last aid lending, my cares are done : 
No more a rover, or hapless lover, 

My griefs are over, and my glass runs low ; 
Then for that reason, and for a season, 

Let us be merry before we go ! 



118 LIFE OF CUERAX. 

been proud, lie miglit have enjoyed this pleasure to the full. 
Upon the occasion of every return to the scene of childhood, 
visits and congratulations upon his increasing fame poured in 
upon " the counsellor " from every side. " His visitors" (accord- 
ing to his own description) " were of each sex and of every rank, 
and their greetings were of as many kinds. Some were delivered 
in English, and some in Irish, and some in a language that was a 
sort of a compromise between the two — some were communicated 
verbally — some by letter or by deputy, the absentees being just at 
that moment .' in trouble,' which generally meant, having been 
lately committed for some ' unintentional ' misdemeanour, from 
the consequences of which, who could extricate them so success- 
fully as ' the counsellor V some came in prose — some in all the 
pomp of verse ; for Mr. O'Connor, the roving bard (of whom Mr. 
Curran used to say, that if his imagination could have carried 
him as far as his legs did, he would have been the most astonish- 
ing poet of the age), was never absent ; at w^hatever stage of their 
poetical circuit he and his itinerant muse might be, the moment 
certain intelligence reached them that the master of the Priory 
had arrived, they instantly took a short cut across the country, 
and laid their periodical offering at the feet of him whose high 
fortune they had of course been the first to predict." 

All these petty honours gratified his heart, if not his pride, and 
he never fastidiously rejected them. Those who came from the 
mere ambition of a personal interview, he sent away glorying in 
their reception, and delighted with his condescension and urbanity; 
to those who seemed inclined " to carry away anything rather than 
an appetite," he gave a dinner. The village disturber of the 
peace had once more a promise that his rescue should be effected 
at the ensuing assizes, while the needy laureat seldom failed to receive 
the " crown" which he had " long preferred to the freshest laurels.'"^ ' 



* The poetry of the roving bard has by some accident perished ; but his name is pre- 
served in a short and unambitious specimen of his favourite art. His muse at one time 
became so importunate, that Mr. Curran found it necessary to discourage her addresses ; 



J 



,in, ] 

in vain, V 
; again. J 



THE BAEDLING. 119 

[During the Session of 11 Si, Mr. Curran constantly attended 
to his parliamentary duties. At the connnencement of the 

instead therefore of rewarding one of her effusions with the expected donation, he sent 
the bard the following impromptu : 

A collier once in days of yore, 

From famed Newcastle's mines, a store 

Of coals had rais'd and with the load 

He straightway took Whitehaven road; 

When thither come, he look'd around, 

And soon a ready chap he found ; 

But after all his toil and pain. 

He measured out his coals ir 

For he got naught but coals agai 

Thus Curran takes O'Connor's Inys, 

And with a verse the verse repays ; 

Not VArse indeed as good as thine, 

Nor rais'd from such a genuine mine ; 

But were it better, 't were in vain 

To emulate O'Connor's strain. 

Then take, my friend — and freely take, 

The verses for the poet's sake : 

Yet one advice from me receive, 

*T will many vain vexations save ; 

Should, by strange chance, your muse grow poor, 

Bid her ne'er seek a poet's door. 

The disappointed bard retorted : and his concluding verse, 
If you're paid such coin for your law, # 
You '11 ne'er be worth a single straw, 

was felt to contain so important and undeniable a truth, that his solicitations could be 
no longer resisted. These are trifles ; but the subject of these pages gladly sought 
relief in them, when satiated with more splendid cares. 

Mr. Curran composed two other little poems, of a different description, about this time. 
The first of the following has been praised, as possessing peculiar delicacy of thought, by 
the most admired poet that Ireland has ever produced. 

ON RETURNING A RING TO A LADY. 

Thou emblem of faith— thou sweet pledge of a passion. 

By heaven reserved for a happier than me — 
On the hand of my fair go resume thy loved station, 

Go back in the beam that is lavish'd on thee ! 
And if, some past scene thy remembrance recalling, 
Her bosom shall rise to the tear that is falling, 
With the transport of love may no anguish combine. 
But be 7iers all the bliss — and the sufferings all mine. 



120 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

Session of 1786, and again in 178*7, the Viceroy's speech alhided 
to the disturbances in the South of Ireland. On the latter occa- 
sion, a vehement debate arose on the address in reply to the 
viceregal missive, and Curran delivered a speech Tvhich Davis 
calls " one of his best in parliament." The government party 

Yet say (to thy mistress ere yet I restore thee). 

Oh say why thy charm so indifferent to me? 
To her thou art dear— then should I not adore thee? 

Can the heart that is hers be regardless of thee? 
But the eyes of a lover, a friend, or a brothei-, 
Can see naught in thee, but the flame of another; 
On me then thou 'rt lost ; as thou never couldst prove 
The emblem of faith or the token of love. 

But, ah ! had the ringlet thou lov'st to surround — 

Had it e'er kiss'd the rose on the cheek of my dear, 
What ransom to buy thee could ever be found, 

Or what force from my heart thy possession could tear ? 
A mourner, a sufif'rer, a wanderer, a stranger — 
In sickness, in sadness, in pain, and in danger, 
Next my heart thou shouldst dwell till its last gasp were o'er — 
Then together we 'd sink — and I 'd part thee no more. 

ON MRS. BILLINGTON'S BIRTH-DAY. 

The wre#h of love and friendship twine, 

And deck it round with flow'rets gay — 
Tip the lip with rosy wine, 

'T is fair Eliza's natal day ! 

Old Time restrains his ruthless hand, 

And learns one favourite form to spare ; 
Light o'er her tread, by his command. 

The Hours, nor print one footstep there. 

In amorous sport the purple Spring 

Salutes her lips, in roses drest ; 
And Winter laughs, and loves to fling 

A flake of snow upon her breast. 

So maj' thy days, in happiest pace, 

Divine Eliza, glide along ! 
Unclouded as thy angel face. 

And sweet as thy celestial song. 



PARLIAMENTARY LIFE. 121 

declared that the disturbance ahnost exchisively consisted of 
resistance to the clergy (^. e., to tithes), and accused the landlords 
of grinding the people and abetting the disturbances, and 
demanded fresh powers. Fitzgibbon, then Attorney-General, 
speaking of his general knowledge of the Province of Munster, 
said, " I know it is impossible for human wretchedness to exceed 
that of the miserable peasantry in that 2>rovince. I know that the 
unhappy tenants are ground to powder by relentless landlwdsy 
The Address was an echo of the ^'iceregal speech, and Curran 
moved an amendment to it, to the effect that the ordinar}^ powers 
of the law were fully adequate, if duly exerted, to punish and 
restrain the excesses complained of, and also, that it was necessary 
to reduce the burthens of the people by every honorable mode of 
retrenchment. In proposing this, CuiTan entered fully into the 
causes of the general distress which had produced partial dis- 
turbances. " Unbound to the sovereign by any proof his affec- 
tion, unbound to government by any instance of its protection, 
unbound to the country, or to the soil, by being destitute of any 
property in it, 'tis no wonder that the peasantry should be up for 
rebellion and revolt ; so far from being matter of surprise, it must 
naturally have been expected." Another passage is very good : 
— " I have read the history of other nations, and I have read the 
history of yours. I have seen how happily you emerged from 
insignificance, and obtained your Constitution. But w^heu you 
washed this Constitution with the waters which were to render it 
invulnerable, like the mother of Achilles, you forgot that the 
part by which you held it was untouched on the immersion ; it 
was benumbed, and not rendered in^^llnerable, and therefore it 
should attract your nicest care." 

On January 23d, 1787, again alluding to the disturbances, Mr. 
Curran said, " The low and contemptible state of your magistracy 
is the cause of much evil, particularly in the Kingdom of Kerry. 
I say Kingdom, for it seems absolutely not a part of the same 
county." 

G 



122 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

In what was called the Eight Boy Oath, there was a clause 
authorizing magistrates to pull down Roman Catholic Churches at 
which combinations should be formed, or unlawful oaths adminis- 
tered. On February 19th, 1787, on the motion for the committal 
of the bill, this clause was objected to, and, though not insisted 
on, Avas strongly defended by the Attorney-General, Fitzgibbon. 
Mr. Curran declared that such an act would be a proclamation 
of a relio-ious war in Ireland. 

On the following day, on the motion that the application of 
the bill be limited to Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary, Mr. 
Curran supported the limitation — which was lost by a large 
majority. 

On March the 12th, 1787, on the renewal of the lost bill for 
limiting pensions, Mr. Curran again supported it ; on the follow- 
ing day he spoke in favour of a resolution moved by Mr. Grattan, 
that, if tranquillity Avere restored at the next opening of the Session, 
the House would consider the tithe question. Speaking of the 
Protestant clergy, he said, " I will never hear of any attempt to 
injure their legal rights. I love their relig-ion ; there is only one 
religion under Heaven w hich I love more than the Protestant, but 
I confess there is one — the Christian religion." Grattan's motion 
was lost, without a division. 

It Avas sought to introduce into Ireland, the English Navi- 
gation LaAv, originated by CroniAvell, in 1650, and carried out by 
12th Charles II., c. 18. The Dublin merchants petitioned against 
it. Fitzgibbon insulted their petition, Grattan moved an amended 
clause (not carried) that the act should bind Ireland, only Avhile 
the benefits and restraints of it Avere equal in the tAvo countries. 
He was supported by Mr. Curran, Avho said that the Navigation 
Act was founded on principles of imperial monopoly — to depress 
the rivals of Great Britain, and to advance the poAver of the naAy. 
To accept it Avould be to deprive Ireland of a great commercial 
right.] 

In the year 1787 Mr. Curran visited France, a country for whose 



VISIT TO FRANCE. 123 

literature and manners lie had had a very early predilection. The 
following letters give an account of its first impression on him ; 
and, however carelessly ^vritten, their insertion ^vill be at least 
some relief to the harsher scenes of political contention, -which 
occupy so much of his future history. 

Dieppe, Friday, August 31st, 1TS7. 

" My last from Brighton told you I was setting sail — I did so 
about eight o'clock yesterday evening, and after a pleasant voyage, 
landed here this day at twelve. To-morrow I set out for Rouen, 
A\'here I shall probably remain two or three days. 

" I cannot say the first view of France has made a very favour- 
able impression on me. I am now writing in the best lodging- 
room in the best inn of Dieppe, I'hotel de la Ville de Londres. 
Monsieur de la Rue, the host, danced up to me on board the 
2)acket, did everything I wanted, and oftered a thousand services 
that I had no occasion for. I mounted to my present apartment 
by a flight of very awkward stairs ; the steps, some of brick, some 
of wood, but most of both. The room contains two old fantastical 
chests of drawers ; a table, on wdiich I now write ; four chairs, 
with cane backs and bottoms ; and a bed, five feet from the bricks 
that compose the floor (the first floor); the walls half covered 
with lime and half with a miserable tapestry. I dined very well, 
however, on a small fish like a trout, a beefsteak, and a bottle of 
Burgundy, which the maid that attended me would not admit to 
be ' chevalier.' 

" I then walked out to see the town, and, God knows, a sad 
sight it is: it seems to have been once better, but it is now 
strength fallen into ruin, and finery sunk into decay. It smote 
me with a natural sentiment of the mortality of all human things; 
and I was led by an easy transition to inquire for the churches. 
I inquired of a decent-looking man, who sat at a door, knitting 
stockings, and he, with great civility, stopped his needles, and 
directed me to the church of St. Jacques, having first told me how 
fine it was, and how many years it was built. It has a profusion 



124: LIFE OF CURHAX. 

of sculpture in it, and, I suspect, not of tlie best kind ; however, 
the solemnity of the whole made amends, and indeed, I think, 
well might, for that deficiency, to me who am so little a connois- 
seur in the matter. I could not but respect the disinterestedness 
and piefy of our ancestors, who laboured so much to teach pos- 
terity the mortality of man ; and yet, on turning the idea a little, 
I could not but suspect that the vain-glory of the builders of pyra- 
mids and temples was no small incentive to their labours ; why 
else engrave the lessons of mortality in characters intended to 
endure for ever, and thus become an exception to the rule they 
would establish ? But I am turning preacher instead of traveller. 

"I reserved the view of the inhabitants for the last. Every 
nation, 't is said, has a peculiar feature. I trust poor France shall 
not be judged of, in that point, by Dieppe. I had expected to sea 
something odd on my arrival, but I own I was unprepared for 
what I met; the day was warm, and, perhaps, the better sort of 
people were all within. Many hundreds were busy on the quays 
and streets, but any thing so squalid, so dirty, and so ugly, I 
really never saw. At some little distance, I mistook the women 
for sailors, with long boddices, and petticoats not completely 
covering their knees, which I really took for trousers ; however, 
on a neai-er view, I saw their heads covered with linen caps, their 
beards unshaved, and perceived they wore slippers with rather 
high heels ; by which, notwithstanding the robust shape of their 
legs, and their unusual strut, I ascertained their sex sufficiently for 
a traveller. 

" I may say, truly, I did not see a being this day between the 
ages of fifteen and fifty. I own I Avas therefore surprised to find 
that there were children; for such I found to be a parcel of 
strange little figures ; the female ones with velvet hoods, and the 
male with their little curled heads covered with woollen nightcaps, 
regardless of the example of their hardy old fathers, if they were 
not their grandsires, who carried about heads without a hair or a 
hat to protect them. 

" In truth, I am at a loss to reconcile so many contradictions as 



125 



I have met with here even in a few hours. Even though I should 
not mention the height of their beds, nor the unwieldiness of their 
carriages, as if the benefit of rest was reserved for vaulters and 
rope-dancers, and the indolent and helpless onlj were intended to 
change their place ; but perhaps those impressions are only the 
first and the mistaken views of a traveller, that ought to see more 
and reflect more before he forms his opinions. I believe so, too ; 
and, if I change or correct them, the French nation shall have the 
benefit of my change of opinion. If not, I hope my mistake will 
not do much injury to the power, or riches, or vanity of his most 
Christian Majesty. 

" Yours ever, 

"J. P. C." 

A few days after, in a letter from Rouen, he says : " I still find 
myself confirmed every day in a preference for my own poor 
countr}^ The social turn of these people certainly has the advan- 
tage ; their manners are wonderfully open and pleasant ; but still, 
in everything I have yet seen, I have observed a strange medley 
of squalid finery and beggarly ostentation, with a want of finishing 
in every article of building or manufacture, that marks them at 
least a century behind us. Yet have they their pleasant points : 
gay, courteous, temperate, ill-clothed, and ill-accommodated, they 
seem to have been negligent only in what regarded themselves, 
and generously to have laboured in what may render them agree- 
able to their visitors." 

As Mr. Curran travelled on towards Paris, he received a mark 
of public attention, for which he was, in a great measure, indebted 
to his eloquent defence of the Roman Catholic priest already 
mentioned. His friend, tlie Reverend Arthur O'Leary (more 
generally called Father O'Leary"^), knowing that he was to pass 

* Arthur O'Leary, born at Cork, and educated in France, was a Capuchin friar of the 
order of St. Francis. He was a true and tried patriot, a wit as well as a humourist, and 
a clear-heiided, powerful writer. In despair for his country, he retired to England, and 



126 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

throiigli a particular town, wrote to the superior of a convent in 
the neiglibourhood, describing the traveller that was shortly to 
arrive there, and requesting that so ardent a friend of their reli- 
gion should he welcomed and entertained with all courtesy and 
honour. Mr. Curran no sooner reached the place, than he 
received a pressing invitation to take up his abode at the con- 
vent. He accordingly proceeded thither, and was met at the 
gates by the abbot and his brethren in procession. The keys of 
the convent were presented to him, and his arrival hailed in a 
Latin oration, setting forth his praises and their gratitude for his 
noble protection of a suffering brother of their church. 

Their Latin was so bad, that the stranger, without hesitation, 
replied in the same language. After expressing his general 
acknowledgments for their hospitality, he assured them that 
nothing could be more truly gratifying to him than to reside for 
a few days among them ; that he should feel himself perfectly at 
home in their society; for that he was by no means a stranger to 
the habits of a monastic life, being himself no less than a Prior 
of an Order in his own country — the Order of St. Patrick, or the 
Monks of the Screw. Their fame, he added, might r.ever have 
reached the Abbot's ears, but he would undertake to assert for 
them, that, though the brethren of other Orders might be more 
celebrated for learning how to die, the "Monks of the Screw" 
were, as yet, unequalled for knowing how to live. As, however, 
humility was their great tenet and uniform practice, he would 
give an example of it upon the present occasion, and, instead of 
accepting all the keys which the Abbot had so liberally offered, 
w^ould merely take charge, while he stayed, of the key of the 
wine-cellar. 

This little playful sally was accepted in the same spirit of good 



for many years was officiating clergyman in the Roman Catholic chapel in Soho Square, 
London. He died in 1802. He was an eminently social man. One of his retorts has 
been preserved. To a person endeavouring to draw him into a discussion about Purga- 
tory, he answered, "You may go farther, and fare worse." — M. 



TARis IX 1787. 127 

humour with which it was offered ; and the traveller, after passing 
two or three days with the Abbot, and pleasing every one by his 
vivacity and conciliating manners, proceeded on his journey, not 
without a most pressing invitation to take ad\'antage of an}^ future 
occasion of revisiting his friends at the convent. 

The followino' is extracted from one of his letters from Paris : 

" Paris, September 15, 17S7. 

"I have been all about the world with the Carletons,* visiting 
churches, libraries, pictures, operas, &c. Yesterday, we went to 
Versailles, and, though a week-day, had the good luck to see his 
Majestyf at chapel, after which we went out hunting ; after which 
we viewed the palace, the gardens, statues, &c. ; bought two pair 
of garters at a pedlar's stall in an ante-chamber adjoining the 
great gallery, and so returned to town. All that could be seen, 
even on a Sunday, besides, would be the Queen, who would proba- 
bly take very little notice of her visitors ; so I shall probably, I 
think, go no more to Versailles. Mr. BoyseJ is perfectly well. I 
have w^ritten to him this day. My health, thank God, has been 
perfectly good since I came here, to which, I suppose, the temper- 
ance of this country has contributed not a little. I am early as 
usual ; read, w^-ite, dine, go to the coffee-house, the play, as usual ; 
one day now seems to be the former, and I begin to be vexed at 
its being the model of the next. Perhaps upon earth there can- 
not be found in one city such a variety of amusements : if you 
walk the Boulevards in the evening, you see at least ten thousand 
persons employed in picking the pockets of as many millions, 
reckoning players, rope-dancers, jugglers, buffoons, bird-sellers, 
bear-dances, learned beasts, &c. Yet, I begin to grow satiated, 
and often wish for a more tranquil habitation." 

Among the traits of French manners, which Mr. Curran, upon 

* The family of the late Lord Carleton, an Irish judge. — M. 

t Louis XVI.— AI. 

$ The benevolent clergyman to wliom he chiefly owed his education. — M. 



128 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

his return, related as having greatly entertained him, was the 
following little incident, which will be also found to be perfectly 
characteristic of his own. 

He was one evening sitting in a box, at the French Opera, 
between an Irish noblewoman, whom he had accompanied there, 
and a very young Parisian female. Both the ladies were pecu- 
liarly interesting in their appearance, and very soon discovered a 
strong inclination to converse, but, unluckily, each was ignorant 
of the other's language. To relieve their anxiety, Mr. Curran 
volunteered to be their interpreter, or, in his ow^n words, " to be 
the carrier of their thoughts, and accountable for their safe deli- 
very." They accepted the offer with delight, and immediately 
commenced a vigorous course of observations and inquiries upon 
dress and fashion, and such commonplace subjects ; but their 
interpreter, betraying his trust, changed and interpolated so 
much, that the dialogue soon became purely his own invention. 
He managed it, however, Avith so much dexterity, transmitting 
between the parties so many finely-turned compliments, and ele- 
gant repartees, that the unsuspecting ladies became fascinated 
with each other. The Parisian denioiselle was in raptures with 
the w it and colloquial eloquence of milachj, whom she declared to 
be parfaitement ahnahle ; while the latter protested that she now, 
for the first time, felt the full charm of French vivacity. At 
length, when their mutual admiration was raised to its most ecsta- 
tic height, the wily interpreter, in conveying some very innocent 
question from his countrywoman, converted it into an anxious 
demand, if she might be favoured with a kiss. " Mais oui, mon 
Dieu, oui !" cried out the animated girl; "j'allois le proposer moi- 
meme ;" and, springing across Mr. Curran, imprinted an empha- 
tic salutation, according to the custom of her country, upon each 
cheek of his Mr companion ; and then turning to him, added, 
" vraiment, monsieur, madame votre amie est un veritable ange." 
The latter never discovered the deception ; but, after her return to 
Ireland, used often to remind Mr. Curran of the circumstance, and 



LETTER FEOM ME. BOYSE. 129 

ask "wliat in the world the young lady could have meant by 
such strange conduct?" to which he would only archly reply: 
"Come, come, your ladyship must know that there is but one 
thing in the world that it could have meant, and the meaning of 
that is so literal, that it does not require a commentator." 

The name of Mr. Boyse occurred in his last letter ; the friend 
of his childhood, between whom and Mr. Curran the most cordial 
intercourse continued, until death dissolved it."^ The delicacy of 
that gentleman's health had obliged him to reside, for several 
years past, upon the Continent, from which he regularly* corres- 
ponded with his former pupil. One of his letters, written in this 
year, shall be inserted, as an example of the kind and confidential 
feeling that pervades them all. 

"to J. r. CURRAN, ESQ. ELY PLACE, DUBLIN. 

"BuuxELLES, Feb. 7, 17ST. 

"Dear Jack, 

" I hope my friend's affairs are going well, and flourishing as 
when I left him : mine, I suppose, are in the last stage of con- 
sumption, so that I almost dread to make inquiry about them. 
My health has been so good this winter, that I came from Aix 
here to escort a Mr. Low and family, my relations, who are on 
their road to England and Ireland. To-morrow, I return to Aix- 
la-Chapelle, for the remainder of the winter. I hope you were 
paid the money I drew on you for, as I must soon draw on you 
again for £60. If I have no funds at Newmarket, I shall write 
to Dick Boyse to pay you, and shall always take care that you 

shall be no sufferer by me. 

"Let me hear how you go on, and what chance you have 

of the bench. I wish you had realized seven or eight hundred a 
year for your family. Is your health good, and your life regu- 
lar ? I saw Grattan and Fitzgibbon at Spa ; the former friendly 
and agreeable, the latter disagreeable to every one. I dined with 

*.Mf. Boyse died a few years after the date of this letter.— C. 

6* 



130 LITE OF CUREAN. 

him and Mr. Orde, at a club where we are members, but he was 
solemn and displeasing to us all. My compliments to Grattan 
and his wife, and ask him for her on my part ; she is very 
amiable. What is to become of us with the White Boys ? If 
I am not an absolute beggar, I will go home the latter end of the 
summer. How go on all your children ? An account of yourself 
and them will give me pleasure. With best wishes to you all, 
" I am, dear Jack, yours, sincerely, 

" Nat. Boyse." 

Mr. Boyse came over to Ireland in the following year. Upon 
the morning of his arrival in Dublin, as he was on his way 
to Ely Place, he was met by his friend, v/ho was proceed- 
ing in great haste to the Courts, and had only time to wel- 
come him, and bid him defer his visit till the hour of din- 
ner. Mr. Curran invited a number of the eminent men at 
the bar to meet Mr. Boyse ; and on returning home at a late 
hour from court, with some of his guests, found the clergyman, 
still in his travelling dress, seated in a familiar posture at the fire, 
with a foot resting upon each side of the grate. " Well, Jack," 
said he turning round his head, but never altering his position, 
"here have I been for this hour past, admiring all the fine things 
that I see around me, and wondering where you could have 
got them all." "You would not dare," returned Mr. Curran, 
deeply aiiected by the recollections which the observation called 
up, " to assume such an attitude, or use so little ceremony, if you 
were not conscious that every thing you see is your own. Yes, 
my first and best of friends, it is to you that I am indebted for it 
all. The little boy whose mind you formed, and whose hopes 
you animated, profiting by your instructions, has risen to 
eminence and affluence ; but the work is yours ; what you see is 
but the paltry stucco upon the building of which you laid the 
foundation."'* 

* Mr. Phillips has worked up this incident into a very dramatic scene— but without 



VISIT TO HOLLAi;rD. 131 

[In 1'788, the Parliamentary Reports only gave one speech by 
Mr. Curran. It was on contraband trade, and bears date Febru- 
ary 19, 1788. It is not without a touch of wit and quaintness. 
After saving- that high duties were a premium to the contraband 
trader, he continued, " The conduct of the gentlemen who 
conduct the revenue department reminds me of a circumstance 
which happened in our University some time ago. The lads had 
got a custom of breaking the lamps. For a long time there could 
be found no remedy for this grievance, but mending them 
when broken, till at length a very sagacious member of the Board 
of Fellows hit upon a very extraordinary expedient. ' The lamps,' 
said he, ' cannot be well broken in the daytime without imme- 
diate detection, wherefore if they were taken down at night- 
fell every evening, and put up every morning, the mischief might 
be prevented !' The learned doctor's argument has been adopted 
by the gentlemen of the revenue : they find that smuggling has 
risen to a great height, they then shut up the ports, thereby 
making them of no use."] 

This year (1788) Mr. Curran visited Holland, from which he 
writes as follows : 

" Heltohtslcys, August 1, 1783. 

"Just landed, after a voyage of forty-two hours, having 
left Harwich, Wednesday, at six in the evening. We are just 
setting out in a treckscuit for Rotterdam. 

" I can say little, even if I had time, of the first impres- 
sion that Holland makes on a traveller. The country seems as if 
it were swimming for its life, so miserably low does it appear ; 
and from the little I have seen of Its inhabitants, I should 
not feel myself much interested in the event of a struggle. We 
were obliged to put iip an orange cockade on our entrance. We 
have just dined, and I am so disturbed by the settling the 

improving it. Even as related liere there is much coarseness in Ourran's telling the old 
clergyman, his benefactor, that he would not dare to assume such an attitude, &c.— M. 



132 LIFE OF CUKRA^. 

Lill, and the disputes about guilders and stivers, &c., that I must 

conclude. 

" Yoiu's ever, 

"J. P. C." 

*' Amsterdam, August 5, 178S. 

"You can't expect to find much entertainment in any let- 
ter from Holland. The subject must naturally be as flat as 
tho country, in which, literally, there is not a single eminence 
three inches above the level of the water, the greater part lying 
much below it. We met Mr. Ilannay, a Scotchman, on the pas- 
sage, who had set out on a similar errand. Yv^e joined accord- 
ingly. A few moments after my letter from Ilelvoetshiys was 
written, we set out in a treckscuit for Rotterdam, where, after a 
voyage of twenty-four hours easy sail, we arrived without 
any accident, notwithstanding some struggle between an adverse 
wind and the horse that drew us. We staid there only one day, 
and next day set out for the Hague, a most beautiful village, the 
seat of the Prince of Orange, and the residence of most of 
the principal Dutch. Yesterday we left it, and on going aboard 
found four inhabitants of Rouen, and acquaintances of my 
old friend Du Pont. We were extremely amused with one 
of them, a little thing about four feet long, and for the first time 
in his life a traveller. He admired the abundance of the waters, 
the beauty of the windmills, and the great opulence of Hol- 
land, which he thought easy to be accounted for, considering 
that strangers paid a penny a mile for travelling, which was 
double what a French gentleman was obliged to pay at home ; 
nor could it otherwise be possible for so many individuals to 
indulge in the splendor of so many country villas as we saw 
ranged along the banks of the canals, almost every one of which 
liad a garden and menagerie annexed. The idea of the menage- 
rie he caught at the instant from a large poultry coop, which he 
spied at the front of one of those little boxes, and which 
contained half a dozen turkeys and as many hen§, 



AMSTERDAM. 133 

" Tlie evening, yesterday, brought us to Amsterdam. We had 
au interpreter who spoke no language. We knew not, under 
heaven, where to go; spoke in vain to every fellow-passenger, 
hut got nothing in return but Dutch ; among the rest to a person 
in whom, notwithstanding the smoke, I thought I saw something 
of English. At length he came up to me, and said he could hold 
out no longer. He directed us to an inn ; said he some- 
times amused himself with concealing his country, and that 
once at Rotterdam he carried on the joke for five days, to 
the great annoyance of some unfortunate Englishmen, who 
knew nobody, and dined every day at the table d'hote he fre- 
quented. Last night we saw a French comedy and opera 
tolerably performed. This day we spent in viewing the port, 
stad-house, &c., and shall depart to-morrow for Rotterdam 
or Utrecht, on our way to Antwerp. 

" You cannot expect much observation from a visitor of a day : 
the impression, however, of a stranger, cannot be favourable 
to the people. They have a strange appearance of the cleanli- 
ness, for w^hich they are famous, and of the dirt that makes 
it necessary : their outsides only have I seen, and I am satisfied 
abundantly with tliat. Never shall I wish to return to a country 
that is at best dreary and unhealthy, and is no longer the seat of 
freedom ; yet of its arbitrariness I have felt nothing more than 
the necessity of wearing an orange riband in my hat. My next 
will be from Spa, where I hope to be in six or seven days ; till 

then farewell. 

" Yours ever, 

"J. P. C." 



134 LIFE OF CURE AN. 



CHAPTER Vn. 

His Majesty's illness— Communicated to the House of Commons — Mr. Curran's speech 
upon the Address — Regency question — Formation of the Irish Whig opposition — Mr. 
Curran's speech and motion upon the division of the boards of stamps and accounts — 
Answered by Sir Boyle Roche — Mr. Curran's reply — Correspondence and duel with 
Major Hobart — Effects of Lord Clare's enmity — Alderman Howison's case. 

The year 1*789 was in many respects one of the most interest- 
ing and important in Mr. Curran's life. From liis entrance into 
Parliament he had hitherto been chiefly engaged in an occasional 
desultory resistance to the Irish administration, rather acting with, 
than belonging to the party in opposition ; but in this year a 
momentous question arose, in the progress and consequence of 
which, there was such a development of the system by which 
Ireland was in future to be governed, that he did not hesitate to 
fix his political destiny for ever, by irrevocably connecting himself 
wdth those whose efforts alone he thought could save their 
country. His late Majesty's most afflicting indisposition had 
taken place towards the close of the year 1788. It is known to 
all that upon the announcement of that melancholy event, the 
British parliament proceeded to nominate Ilis Pioyal Highness 
the Prince of Wales regent, under particular limitations and 
restrictions ; a mode of proceeding which the Irish ministry were 
peculiarly anxious that the Irish parliament should studiously 
imitate. For this purpose great exertions were nov,- made to secure 
a majority. To Mr. Curran it was communicated that his support of 
the government would be rewarded with a judge's place, and with 
the eventual prospect of a peerage ; but he was among those who 
considered it essential to the dignity of the parliament, and the 
interests of Ireland, that the Heir Apparent should be in\ated by 



THE REGENCY QUESTION. 135 

address to assume tlie full and unrestricted exercise of the regal 
functions ; and fortunately for liis fame, lie liad too much respect 
for his duties and his character, to sacrifice them to any con- 
siderations of personal advancement. 

The Irish administration had been anxious to defer the meet- 
ing of the legislature until the whole proceedings respecting the 
regency should be completed in England, in the hope that the con- 
duct pursued by the British parliament might be followed as a 
precedent in Ireland ; but the urgencies of the public business not 
admitting so long a delay, the session was opened on the 5th of 
February, 1789, by the viceroy (the Marquis of Buckingham), 
when the King's illness was for the first time announced to the 
country.* On the following day, in the debate on the address of 
thanks, his Excellency's late conduct was made the subject of 
much severe animadversion. Upon that occasion Mr. Curran 
spoke as follows : 

" I oppose the address,f as an address of delay. I deeply 
lament the public calamity of the King's indisposition : it is not so 
welcome a tale to me as to call for any thanks to the messenger 

* Early in 1764, (the year in which George III. suggested to Lord Granville the taxa- 
tion of America, as a grand financial measure for relieving the mother country from the 
heavy war expenses, which had chiefly been incurred for the security of the Colonies), 
George III. was attacked by an indisposition of six weeks' duration, which is suspected 
to have been similar in its nature to, though less in its degree than, the malady which 
assailed him in 17SS-'9, and completely clouded the last ten years of his life. It is a well- 
known fact, that the Royal Family of England have a predisposition to insanity, attri- 
buted to their in-and-in breeding system, caused by their marriages with other than royal 
and Protestant houses being prohibited by law, which has led to their union with cousins 
and such near relations. It has been sharply said, "that the Guelphs are divided into 
only two classes, — those who o.re bad, and those who are mad." — M. 

t One of the par'vgra.pK? o* the address upon which the debate arose was the following : 
*' We ie*»i-vn ycTir ^ix^'eUecCy sincere thanks (however we must lament the necessity of 
^uch a. e^vcumstance) for ordering the communication of such documents as you have re- 
ceived respecting his majesty's health, as well as for your intention of laying before us such 
further information as may assist our deliberations upon that melancholy event." — C. 

[In 1782-'3, Earl Temple (subsequently created Marquis of Buckingham) was Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland. In December, 17S7, he was again appointed and held the ofiBce 
for two years.] — M. 



136 LIFE OF CUPvKAN. 

that brings it. Instead of tiianks for communicating it now, it 
should be resented as an outrage upon us that he did not commu- 
nicate it before/''' As to thanks for the wishes of Ireland, it is a 
strange time for the noble Marquis to call for it. I do not wish 
that an untimely vote of approbation should mix with the voice 
of a people's lamentation : it is a picture of general mourning, in 
which no man's vanity ought to be thrust in as a figure. But if it 
is pressed, what are its pretensions ? One gentleman (Mr. Boyd) 
has lost hundreds a year by his arts, and defends him on that 
ground ; another (Mr. Corry) praises his economy for increasing 
salaries in the ordnance — the economy of the noble lord is then 
to be proved only by public or by private losses. Another right 
honourable gentleman (the Attorney-General) has painted him as 



* George III. liad a bilious fever in October, 17S3. On the 24th of that month, however, 
he attended a levee, but, immediately after, exhibited symptoms of insanity. For some 
time before, he had complained of weight or pressure on the brain, and anticipated how 
it would end. At a private concert, one evening, he said to Dr. Ayrton, " I fear, sir, I 
shall not be able long to hear music ; it seems to affect my head, and it is with some dififi- 
culty I bear it. Alas! the best of us are but frail mortals." The King's illness was pub- 
licly known in November. Dr. Warren, the regular physician to the Royal Household, 
had no hope of his recovery. Dr. Willis, famous for his success in the treatment of mad 
people, declared that the malady would be of short duration. Charles Fox and the Op- 
position held on by Warren's prognostication. William Pitt, and the ministerial party 
confided in the opinion of Willis. It was generally admitted that a Regency was indis- 
pensable, and that the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.) was the proper person, 
as his heir-apparent, to be appointed. Then came the dispute as to the degree of power 
which, as the King's representative, the Regent should exercise. Fox contended that he 
should have the royal authority in as much plenitude as the Sovereign himself. Pitt ad- 
vocated the necessity and legality of imposing various restrictions upon his authority. 
Pitt's proposition was carried, and the bill had reached its last stage, in the English Par- 
liament, when the King suddenly recovered — in consequence, it is said, of Dr. Willis hav- 
ing calmed him by sleep, brought on by the use of a pillow stuffed with hops. Mean- 
while, the Irish Parliament had hastily carried a measure giving an unrestricted Regency 
to the Prince of Wales. The Viceroy, having refused to transmit their resolutions to 
London, a deputation from the Irish Lords and Commons was despatched with them, 
and made such good speed as to arrive in London a week after the king's convalescence 
was announced ! In one of the stages of the King's malady, it was announced in one of 
the bulletins of health, that his Majesty had been so far recovered, as to be able to take 
the air on horseback. "Then," said Curran, " all this work about appointing a Regent 
is gone for nothing. What happiness will be diflfused among his Majesty's subjects, when 
they learn that he is now able totake tJie rei?}./^." — M. 



THE REGENCY QUESTION. 137 

a man of uncouth manners, mucli addicted to vulgar aritlimetic, 
and therefore entitled to praise. But what have his calculations 
done ? They have discovered that a dismounted trooper may be 
stript of his boots, as a public saving, or that a mutilated veteran 
might be plundered of half the pittance of his coals, as a stop- 
page for that -wooden leg, which perhaps the humane marquis 
might consider as the most proper fuel to keep others warm. 

" But a learned gentleman (Mr. Wolfe)"^' has defended the para- 
graph, as in fact meaning nothing at all. I confess I find the 
appeal to the compassion of the puplic stronger than that to their 
justice. I feel for the reverses of human fate. I remember this 
very supplicant for a compliment, to which he pretends only 
because it is no compliment, drawn into this city by the people, 
harnessed to his chariot, through streets blazing with illumination ; 
and now, after more than a years labour at computation, he has 
hazarded on a paragraph stating no one act of private or of pub- 
lic good ; supported by no man that says he loves him ; defended, 
not by an assertion of his merit, but by an extenuation of his 
delincpiency. 

" For my part I am but little averse to accede to the sentment 
of an honourable friend who observed, that he was soon to leave 
us, and that it was harsh to refuse him even a smaller civility than 
every predecessor for a century had got. As for me, I do not 
oppose his being borne away from us in a common hearse of his 
political ancestors ; I do not wish to pluck a single faded plume 
from the canopy, nor a single rag of velvet that might flutter on 
the pall. Let us excuse his manners, if he could not help them ; 
let us pass by a little peculation, since, as an honourable member 
says, it was for his brother; and let us rejoice that his kindred 
were not more numerous. But I cannot agree with my learned 
friend v/ho defends the conduct of the noble lord, on the present 
occasion. The Viceroy here, under a party that had taken a pecu- 
liar line in Great Britain, should not have availed himself of his 
trust to forward any of their measures : he should have considered 

* Mr. Pitt was the party thus referred to.— M. 



138 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

himself bound by duty and by delicacy to give the people the 
earliest notice of their situation, and to have religiously abstained 
from any act that could add to the power of his party, or embar- 
rass any administration that might succeed him. Instead of that, 
he abused his trust by proroguing the two Houses, and has dis- 
posed of every office that became vacant in the interval, besides 
reviving others that had been dormant for years. Yet the honour- 
able member says he acted the part of a faithful steward. I 
know not what the honourable member's idea of a good steward is; 
I will tell mine. A good steward, if his master was visited by 
infirmity or by death, would secure every article of his eiBfects for 
his heir ; he would enter into no conspiracy wdth his tenants ; he 
would remember his benefactor, and not forget his interest. I 
will also tell my idea of a faithless, unprincipled steward. He 
would avail himself of the moment of family distraction ; while 
the filial piety of the son was attending the sick bed of the 
father, or mourning over his grave, the faithless steward would 
turn tlie melancholy interval to his private profit; he would 
remember his own interest, and forget his benefactor, he would 
endeavour to obliterate or conceal the title deeds ; to promote 
cabals amono- the tenants of the estate, he would load it with 
fictitious incumbrances ; he would reduce it to a wreck, in order 
to leave the plundered heir no resource from beggary except con- 
tinuing him in a trust which he had been vile enough to betray. 
I shall not appropriate either of these portraits to any man : I hope 
most earnestly that no man may be found in the community, 
whose conscience w^ould acknowledge the resemblance of the 
latter.^' 

" I do not think the pitiful compliment in the address worthj 
a debate or a division ; if any gentleman has a mind to stigma- 
tize the object of it by a poor, hereditary, unmeaning, unmerited 
panegyric, let it pass ; but I cannot consent to a delay at once so 
dangerous and so disgraceful." 

The opposition proved upon this occasion the stronger party ; 

* Afterwards Lord Kilwarden.— M. 



PARLIAMENTARY TACTICS. 139 

Mr. Grattan's proposal that the 11th of February should be 
fixed for taking into consideration the state of the nation 
was carried, against the exertions of the ministry to post- 
pone that important discussion to a more distant day. On 
the 11th accordingly both Houses met; when, upon the motion of 
Mr. Grattan in the one, and of Lord Charlemont in the 
other, the address to the Prince of AVales, requesting his 
royal highness to take upon himself the government of Ire- 
land, with the style and title of Prince Regent, and in the name 
and behalf of his majesty, to exercise all regal functions during 
his majesty's indisposition, was carried by large majorities in 
both houses.'" 

The particulars of the debate in the House of Commons upon 
this interesting subject, in which Mr. Curran bore a distinguished 
part, it would be superfluous to detail in this place, as the 
legislative union has for ever prevented the recurrence of such 
a question ; it will be sufficient merely to observe, that the 
Whig majoiity who planned and carried the measure of an 
address were influenced by two leading considerations.! In the 
first place it seemed to them that the proceeding by an address 
was the only one which would not compromise the independence 
of the Irish Parliament. They conceived the present situation of 
Ireland as similar in many respects to that of England at the 
period of the revolution : the throne, indeed, was not actually 
vacant, but an efiicient executive was wanting; and upon the 

* Pitt's plan was that the Prince Regent should not have the power of making peers, 
of granting offices or pensions, save during royal pleasure, or of making leases, or of 
having the care of the King's person, or of administering, save in the King's name. 
Protesting against them, the Prince of Wales had accepted them from the English Par- 
liament. In Ireland, the legislative resolution was that the Regent should exercise and 
administer " all regal powers, jurisdiction, and prerogatives" belonging to the Crown. 
In ISll, when the Prince of Wales really became Regent, it was. under the restrictions of 
17S9 — which, however, were to cease at the end of twelve months. — M. 

t The resolution (giving unrestricted povver to the Regent) was moved by Mr. Thomas 
Conolly, supported by C. F. Sheridan, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, Sir Henry Cavendish, Cur- 
ran, Bushe, and Grattan, opposed by Hobart, Corry, and Attorney-General Fitzgibbon 
(afterwards Lord Clare), and carried without a division. — M. 



140 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

same principle tliat the two liouses in England had, of tlieir own 
autliority, proceeded to supply the vacancy by the form of an 
address to the Prince of Orange, so it appeared should those of 
Ireland (an equally independent legislature) provide for the defi- 
ciency of their third estate in the present instance. This 
line of conduct was strenuously opposed by the Attorney-General 
(Mr. Fitzgibbon) ; but the strongest of his arguments were rather 
startling than convincing, and made but little impression upon 
the majority, who justly felt that a great constitutional proceed- 
ing upon an unforeseen emergency should not be impeded by any 
narrow technical objections, even though they had been more 
unanswerable than those adduced upon this occasion.* 

Next to supporting the dignity of the Irish Parliament, the 
AVhig leaders of 1789 were actuated by the prospects of advan- 
tage to Ireland which they anticipated from the change of 
administration and of system that w^ere expected to follow their 
exertions. They were anxious to invest the Heir Apparent 
v.'ith the most unrestrained regal authority, in the fullest con- 

* The following was one of Mr. Fitzgibbon's arguments : " Let me now for a moment 
suppose, that we, in the dignity of our independence, appoint a Regent for Ireland, 
being a different person from the Regent of England, a case not utterly impossible, if 
the gentlemen insist upon our appointing the Prince of Wales before it shall 
be known whether he will accept the regency of England ; and suppose we should go 
further, and desire him to give the royal assent to bills, he would say, 'My good people 
of Ireland, you have, by your own law, made the great seal of England absolutely and 
essentially necessary to be affixed to each bill before it passes in Ireland ; that seal is in 
the hands of the Chancellor of England, who is a very sturdy fellow ; that Chancellor is 
an officer under the Regent of England ; I have no manner of authority over him ; and 
so, my very good people of Ireland, you had better apply to the Regent of England, and 
request that he will order the Chancellor of England to affix the great seal of England 
to your bills ; otherwise, my very good people of Ireland, I cannot pass them.' " 

" This," said Mr. Curran, in his observations upon this argument, " is taking seals for 
crowns, and baubles for sceptres ; it is worshipping wafers and wax in the place of a 
King; it is substituting the mechanical quibble of a practising lawyer for the sound 
deduction of a philosopher standing on the vantage ground of science ; it is more like the 
language of an Attorney particular than an Attorney-General ; it is that kind of silly 
fatuity that on any other subject I should leave to be answered by silence and contempt ; 
but when blasphemy is uttered against the constitution, it shall not pass under its insig- 
nificance, because the essence should be reprehended, though the doctrine cannot mako 
a proselyte." — M. 



A BREAK-UP. 141 

fidence that the benefits on wliicli they calculated would be 
commensurate with the power to confer them. How far these 
sanguine hopes would have been realized, how far the measures of 
a ministry listening- to the counsel of Mr. Fox could have healed 
the existing discontents, or have prevented the calamities that 
succeeded, must now be matter of controversial speculation, his 
Majesty's health having been fortunately restored before tlie 
arrangements regarding the Regency v>'ere yet concluded. 

Although the conduct of the Irish House of Commons at this 
important crisis has been generally adduced as a proof of 
the dangerous spirit of independence that pervaded that assem- 
l)]y, and therefore insisted on as an argument for a legisla- 
tive union ; yet, were it now worth while to examine the subject, 
it would not be difficult to show that the crowd who on that 
occasion so zealously volunteered their support of the oppo- 
sition w^ere influenced by far other motives than a lofty sense 
of their own country's dignity; and that, however the Eng- 
lish government might, at some rare conjuncture, be embarrassed 
by their versatility, it had nothing to apprehend from their 
patriotic virtue. No sooner was it ascertained that the cause 
which they had lately espoused was to be unattended with emo- 
lument, than they returned in repentance to their tenets ; and 
incontestably did they prove in their subsequent life the extent 
and the sincerity of their contrition. 

There were a few, however, who would upon no terms continue 
their support of the Irish Administration : they lost their places, 
which they might have retained, and, joining the opposition, 
adhered to it with undeviating and " desperate fidelity," as long 
as the Irish Parliament continued to exist.'^ 

♦Among these were Mr. George Ponsonby, and his brother, Lord Ponsonby ; and in 
the upper house, the Duke of Leinster. In a letter to Mr. Grattan, Mr. Curran thus 
alludes to the formation of the last Opposition in the Irish Parliament: "You well 
remember the state of Ireland in 17S9, and the necessity under which we found ourselves 
of forming some bond of honourable connexion, by which the co-operation of even a 
small number might be secured, in making some effort to stem that torrent which was 
carrying every thing before it. For that purpose our little party was then formed ; it 



14:2 LIFE OF CURRAK. 

[On x\pri] 21, 1789, Ciirran supported tlie bill for pre- 
venting excise officers from voting at parliamentary elections — a 
measure then defeated by a majority of 148 to 93, but since 
adopted all througli tlie United Kingdom. Four days later 
lie supported Sir H. Cavendish's resolutions condemnatory of 
the Avaste and useless patronage ^vitli which the Dublin police 
system Avas attended.] 

It has been seen in the preceding pages, that the zeal with 
which Mr. Curran performed his public duties had already 
twice endangered his life : in the beginning of the year 1790, it 
was again exposed to a similar risk. If his duel with the 
Iiish Secretary, Major Hobart (now alluded to), had been the 
consequence of accidental intemperance of language or con- 
duct on either side, the account of it should be hastily dis- 
missed ; but such was not its character. The circumstances that 
preceded it are peculiarly illustrative of the condition of the 
times, of the state of the Irish House of Commons, of the 
manner in which that state rendered it incumbent upon an 
honest senator to address it, and of the dangers that attended 
him who had the boldness to perform his duty. 

In the month of February, 1790, Mr. Curran made the follow- 
ing speech in that House :* independent of the other reasons 
for which it is here introduced, it may be offered as among 
the most favourable examples of his parliamentary oratory. 

consisted of yourself, the late Duke of Leiuster, that excellent Irishman, the late Lord 
Ponsonby. Mr. George Ponsonby, Mr. Daly, Mr. Forbes, and some very few others. It 
may not be for us to pronounce encomiums upon it, but we are entitled to say, that had 
it been as successful as it was honest, we might now look back to it with some degree of 
satisfaction." — C. [The Ministerial deserters in Ireland were cashiered in all direction. 
It was said that the Minister thus made more patriots in one day than patriotism had ever 
made in a year. Sheridan's younger brothei"^ Charles, the Irish Secretary-at-War, was 
among the ejected — but he fared well, for Pitt gave him a pension of £1,200 a year, with 
a reversion of £300 to his wife.] — M. 

* This speech was delivered on February 4, 1790, on the question of stamp officers' 
s-alaries. At that time the Earl of Westmoreland was Viceroy (he succeeded the Marquis 
<;f Buckingham on January 5, 1790), and Major Hobart was his Chief Secretary— a posi- 
tion not to be confounded with that of Secretary of State for Ireland, abolished at the 
Union. — M. 



PAKLIAMENTAEY ORATORY. 143 

" I rise with tliat deep concern and melancholy hesitation, which 
a man must feel who does not know whether he is addressing an 
independent Parliament, the representatives of the i:>eople of Ire- 
land, or whether he is addressing the representatives of corruption : 
I rise to make the experiment ; and I approach the question with 
all those awful feelings of a man who finds a dear friend 
prostrate and wounded on the ground, and who dreads lest 
the means he should use to recover him may only serve to show 
that he is dead and gone for ever. I rise to make an experiment 
upon the representatives of the people, whether they have abdi- 
cated their trust, and have become the paltry representatives 
of Castle influence ; it is to make an experiment on the feelings 
and probity of gentlemen, as was done on a great personage, 
when it was said, 'thou art the man.' It is not a question 
respecting a paltry Viceroy ; no, it is a question between the body 
of the country and the administration ; it is a charge against the 
government for opening the batteries of corruption against the 
liberties of the people. The grand inquest of the nation are 
called on to decide this charge ; they are called on to declare 
whether they would appear as the prosecutors of the accom- 
plices of corruption : for though the question relative to the divi- 
sion of the Boards of Stamps and Accounts is in itself of little 
importance, yet will it develop a system of corruption tending to 
the utter destruction of Irish liberty, and to the separation of the 
connexion with England. 

" Sir, I bring forward an act of the meanest administration that 
ever disgraced this country. I bring forward as one of the threads 
by which, united with others of similar texture, the vermin of the 
meanest kind have been able to tie down a body of strength and 
importance. Let me not be supposed to rest here; when the 
murderer left the mark of his bloody hand upon the wall, it w^as 
not the trace of one finger, but the whole impression which con- 
victed him.'^ 

♦ The allusion liere is probably to a little story popular among children in Ireland, 



144 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

" The Board of Accounts was instituted in Lord To\ynsh end's 
administration,"^ it came forward in a manner rather inauspicious ; 
it was questioned in Parliament, and decided by the majority of 
the five members who had received pLaces under it. Born in cor- 
ruption, it could only succeed by venality. It continued an useless 
board until the granting of the stamp duties in Lord Harcourt's 
time : f the management of the stamps was then committed to it, 
and a solemn compact was made that tlie taxes should not be 
jobbed, but that both departments should be executed by one board. 
So it continued till it was thought necessary to increase the salaries 
of the commissioners in the Marquis of Buckingham's famous 
administration ; but then nothing Avas held sacred : the increase 
of the Revenue Board, the increase of the Ordnance, thirteen thou- 
sand pounds a year added to the infamous Pension List, these 
were not sufficient, but a compact, which should have been held 
sacred, was violated, in order to make places for members of 
parliament. How indecent ! two county members prying into 
stamps ! What could have provoked this insult ? I will tell you : 
you remember when the sceptre was trembling in the hand of an 
almost expiring monarch ; when a factious and desperate English 
minister attempted to grasp it, you stood up against the profana- 
tion of the English, and the insult off'ered to the L'ish crown ; and 
had you not done it, the union of the empire would have been 
dissolved. You remember this; remember then yourselves — 
remember your triumph : it was that triumph which exposed you 
to submit to the resentment of the Viceroy : it was that triumph 
which exposed you to disgrace and flagellation. In proportion as 
you rose by the union, your tyrant became appalled ; but when 



which states that the murderer, intending to cover the whole mark with dust, left that 
of one finger unconcealed ; but that he continued firmly to protest his innocence, until 
the removal of the dust convicted him, by displaying an impression corresponding exactly 
with the size of his hand. A similar circumstance is introduced in an old Spanish 
play. — C. 

* From 1767 to 1772.— M. 

+ Lord Harcourt succeeded Lord Townshend as Viceroy. — M. 



PAKLIAMENTAKY BUSINESS. 145 

he divided, he sunk you, and you became debased. How this has 
happened, no man could imagine ; no man could have suspected 
that a minister without talents could have worked your ruin. 
There is a pride in a great nation that fears not its destruction 
from a reptile ; yet is there more than fable in what we are told 
of the Romans, that they guarded the Palladium, rather against 
the subtlety of a thief, than the force of an invader. 

" I bring forward this motion, not as a question of finance, not 
as a question of regulation, but as a penal inquiry ; and the people 
will now see whether they are to hope for help within these walls, 
or turning their eyes towards heaven, they are to depend on God 
and their own virtue. I rise in an assembly of three hundred 
persons, one hundred of whom have places or pensions ; I rise in 
an assembly, one third of whom have their ears sealed against the 
complaints of the people, and their eyes intently turned to their 
own interest : I rise before the whisperers of the Treasury, the 
bargainers and runners of the Castle ; I address an audience before 
whom was held forth the doctrine, that the Crown ought to use 
its influence on this house. It has been known that a master has 
been condemned by the confession of his slave, drawn from him 
by torment ; but here the case is plain : this confession was not 
made from constraint ; it came from a country gentleman deser- 
vedly high in the confidence of Administration, for he gave up 
other confidence to obtain theirs. 

" I know I am speaking too plain ; but which is the more 
honest physician, he who lulls his patient into a fatal security, or 
he who points out the danger and the remedy of the disease ? 

" I should not be surprised if bad men of great talents should 
endeavour to enslave a people ; but, when I see folly uniting with 
vice, corruption with imbecility, men without talents attempting 
to overthrow^ our liberty, my indignation rises at the presumption 
and audacity of the attempt. That such men should creep 
into power, is a fatal symptom to the constitution ; the poli- 



146 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 

tical, like tlie material body, when nea;- its dissolution, often 
bursts out in swarms of vermin. 

" In tins administration, a place may be found for every bad 
man, whether it be to distribute the wealth of the Treasury, 
to vote in the House, to whisper and to bargain, to stand at 
the door and note the exits and entrances of your members, 
to mark whether they earn their wages — whether it be for 
the hireling who comes for his hire, or for the drunken aid- 
de-camp who swaggers in a brothel ; nay, some of them find their 
way to the treasury-bench, the political-musicians, or hurdygurdy- 
men, to pipe the praises of the viceroy. 

"Yet notwithstanding the profusion of Government, I ask, 
what defence have they made for the country, in case it should 
be invaded by a foreign foe ? They have not a single ship on the 
coast. Is it then the smug aid-de-camp, or the banditti of 
the Pension List, or the infantine statesmen, w'ho play in the sun- 
shine of the Castle, that are to defend the country ? No, it 
is the stigmatised citizens. We are now sitting in a country 
of four millions of people, and our boast is, that they are 
governed by laws to which themselves consent ; but are not 
more than three millions of the people excluded from any parti- 
cipation in making those laws ? Li a neighboring country,* 
twenty-four millions of people were governed by laws to wdiich 
their consent was never asked ; but we have seen them struggle 
for freedom — in this struggle they have burst their chains, and on 
the altar, erected by despotism to public slavery, they have 
enthroned the image of public liberty. 

" But are our people merely excluded ? No, they are denied 
redress. Next to the adoration which is due to God, I bend 
in reverence to the institutions of that religion, which teaches me 
to know his divine goodness ! but what advantage does the 
peasant of the South receive from the institutions of religion ? 

♦France. — M. 



SIR BOYLE KOCHE. 147 

Does he experience the blessing ? No, lie never hears the voice 
of the shepherd, nor feels the pastoral crook, but when it is 
entering his flesh, and goading his very soul. 

" In this country, sir, our King is not a resident ; the beam of 
royalty is often reflected through a medium, which sheds but 
a kind of disastrous twilight, serving only to assist robbers 
and plunderers. We have no security in the talents, or responsi- 
bility of an Irish ministry ; injuries which the English constitu- 
tion would easily repel may here be fatal. I therefore call 
upon you to exert yourselves, to heave off the vile incumbrances 
that have been laid upon you. I call you not as to a measure of 
finance or regulation, but to a criminal accusation, which you 
may follow with pimishment. I, therefore, sir, most humbly 
move : 

" That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, praying 
that he will order to be laid before this house the particulars 
of the causes, consideration, and representations, in consequence 
of which the Boards of Stamps and Accounts have been divided 
with an increase of salary to the ofiicers; also that he will 
be graciously pleased to communicate to this house the names of 
the persons who recommended that measure." 

To this speech, containing charges so grave and direct, and so 
demanding an equally solemn refutation if they were refutable, it 
is curious to observe the style of answer that was made. "When 
appeals of this nature are received with contumely and mockery, 
it is, perhaps, among the most certain signs, that the legis- 
lature which can tolerate such a practice has completely survived 
its virtue. 

Sir B. Roche. — " Though I am in point of consequence 
the smallest man amongst the respectable majority of this 
house, yet I cannot help feeling the heavy shower of the honour- 
able gentleman's illiberal and unfounded abuse. 

" If I had the advantage of being bred to the learned pro- 
fession of the law, I should be the better enabled to follow 



14S LIFE OF CURRAN. 

the honourable gentleiiian through the long- windings of his 
declamation ; by such means I should be blessed Avith ' the 
gift of the gab' and could declaim for an hour or two upon 
the turning of a straw, and yet say nothing to the purpose ; 
then I could stamp and stare, and rend, and tear, and look 
up to the gods and goddesses for approbation. Then in the 
violence of such declamation, I should suppose myself standing 
at the head of my shop (at the bar of the King s bench), dealing 
out my scurrility by the yard to the highest bidder; my 
shop being well stored with all sorts of masquerade dresses 
to suit all descriptions of persons. The Newgate criminal (if I 
was well paid for it) I would dress up in the flowing robes 
of innocence. The innocent man (being also well paid for it) I 
could cover up in a cloak of infomy, that should stick as close to 
him as his regimentals. 

" I am sorry to find that the military character does not seem 
to meet wdth the honourable gentleman's approbation. I profess 
myself to have had the honour to be bred a soldier, and if there 
is any thing amiable or praiseworthy in my character, I am 
entirely indebted to that school for it. If indeed I w^as bred a 
pettifogger, or a Newgate solicitor, I should be better enabled to 
follow the learned gentleman through the variety of matter which 
he has introduced to the house. My right honourable friend,* 
upon the floor, is animadverted on and abused, because he is a 
soldier ; but let me tell the honourable gentleman below^ me, that 
the high ground of his honour and character places him above 
the reach of his envenomed shafts, bearded with envy, hatred and 
malice. 

* ^ H; ^ % % 'W % ^ !i: % ^ ^ 

The Viceroy of this country is surrounded by military gentlemen 
of the first families in both kingdoms ; they are supposed to be 
out of the line of all politics, yet the indecent and disrespectful 
manner in which they are, on this occasion, held out in this house, 

♦ Major Hobart.— 0. 



KEPLY TO BOYLE ROCHE. 149 

does, in my apprehension, deserve the severest censure. I would, 
however, recommend it to the honourable gentleman to stop a 
little in his career of general abuse of men, who cannot be here 
to answer for themselves; lest those gentlemen (who never 
offended him) might speak to him on the subject in another place. 
Oh, shame ! shame ! shame and reprobation on such beha\dour !" 

After a long debate, Mr. Curran replied, and concluded with 
the following observations upon Sir Boyle Roche's language : 

"We have been told this night in express words, that the man 
who dares to do his duty to his country in this house may expect 
to be attacked without those walls by the military gentlemen of 
the Castle. If the army had been directly or indirectly mentioned 
in the course of the debate, this extraordinary declaration might 
be attributable to the confusion of a mistaken charge, or an 
absurd vindication ; but without connexion with the subject, or 
pretence of connexion with the subject, a new principle of govern- 
ment is advanced, and that is the bayonet ; and this is stated in 
the fullest house, and the most crowded audience I ever saw. We 
are to be silenced by corruption within, or quelled by force of 
arms without. Nor is it necessary that those avowed principles 
of bribery and arms should come from any high personal 
authority ; they have been delivered by the known retailers of 
administration, in the face of that bench, and heard even v/ithout 
a murmur of dissent, or disapprobation. As to my part, I do not 
know how it may be my destiny to fall ; it may be by chance, or 
malady, or violence, but should it be my fate to perish the victim 
of a bold and honest discharge of my duty, I will not shun it. I 
Avill do that duty, and if it should expose me to sink under the 
blow of the assassin, and become a victim to the public cause, 
the most sensible of my regrets would be, that on such an altar 
there should not be immolated a more illustrious sacrifice. As to 
myself, while I live, I shall despise the peril. I feel, in my own 
spirit, the safety of my honour, and in my own and the spirit of 
the people, do I feel strength enough to hold that Administration, 



150 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

whicli can give a sanction to menaces like these, responsihle for 
their consequences to the nation and the individual. 

Mr. CiiiTan liad soon occasion to act upon this last declaration. 
In a few days subsequent to the preceding debate, he was openly- 
insulted by a person belonging to one of those classes, upon 
which he had accused the Administration of squandering the pub- 
lic money. He accordingly deputed one of his friends, Mr. Egan,* 
to acquaint the Secretary with the outrage that had been com- 
mitted on him, in consequence of what he had asserted in the 
House of Commons, and to express his expectation, " that Major 
Hobart would mark his sense of such an indignity offered to a 
Member of Parliament by one of his ofllcial servants, in the dis- 
missal of the man from his service." To this application Major 
Hobart replied, that " he had no power to dismiss any man from 
the service of government," and after referring ]\Ir. Curran to the 
House of Commons, as the tribunal, before which he should com- 
plain of any breach of his privileges, expressed his surprise " that 
any application should have been made to him upon the occasion 
of an outrage committed by a person who was as much a stranger 
to him as he could be to Mr. Curran." Upon this, the following 
respondence ensued : 

"to the right HON. MAJOR HOBART. 

" March 28, 1790. 

"Sir:— 

" A man of the name of , a conductor of your press, a 

writer for your government, your notorious agent in the city, 

* Notwithstanding their friendship, Curran and Egan fought a duel. Curran was small 
in stature and very slight. Egan was a giant. When the seconds were measuring the 
ground Egan said, " Curran, my boy, this is not fair, I might as well fire at a lamp post as 
you, so small are you. Look at me (striking his enormous bulk), you cannot help hit- 
ting me." Curran answered, " Very true, my good fellow. Suppose that we chalk ray 
size upon your person, and every bullet outside the outline shall count for nothing !" 
They both smiled at the ludicrous idea, harmlessly exchanged shots, went and breakfasted 
together, and never again met in a hostile manner. — M. 



LETTER TO MAJOR HOBAKT. 151 

your note-taker in the House of Commons, in consequence of 
some observation that fell from me in that House on your prodi- 
gality, in rewarding such a man with the public money for such 
services, had the audacity to come within a few paces of me, in 
the most frequented part of this metropolis, and shake his stick at 
me in a manner which, notwithstanding his silence, was too plain 
to be misunderstood. I applied to you to dismiss him, because he 
is your retainer, for whom you ought to be responsible. You 
have had recourse to the stale artifice of office, and have set up 
incapacity and irresponsibility against doing an act which, as a 
minister, you were able, and which, as a man of honour, you 
should have been ready to do. As to your being a stranger to 
the man, you knew when you wrote it that it was a pitiful eva- 
sion ; I did not apply to the Secretary to discard a companion, but 
to dismiss the runner of his administration. As to your attempt 
to shelter yourself under the Lord Lieutenant, who, during the 
continuance of his government, cannot be responsible for such 
outrages, you should have felt that to be equally unworthy of you. 
If such subterfuges were tolerated, every member of Parliament, 
every gentleman of the country, who might become obnoxious to 
the Castle, would be exposed to personal violence from the ruffians 
of your administration. I should give up the cause of both, if I 
did not endeavour to check this practice, not in the person of the 
instrument, but of his abettor. I knew perfectly well, the resent- 
ments I had excited by my public conduct, and the sentiments 
and declarations I have expressed concerning your administration. 
I knew I might possibly become the victim of such declarations, 
particularly when I saw that an attempt at personal intimidation 
was part of the plan of government; but I was too deeply 
impressed with their truth to be restrained by any consideration 
of that sort from making them in public, or asserting them with 
my latest breath. 

" Sir, I am aware that you could not be convicted of having 
actually commissioned this last outrage upon me ; but that vou 



J 52 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

have protected and approved it. I own I am very sorry tliat you 
have suffered so unjustifiable a sanction of one of your creatures 
to commit you and me personally. However, as you are pleased 
to disclaim the offender, and the power of punishing him, I feel I 
must acquiesce, Avhatever may be my opinion on the subject, and 
though you have forced upon me a con\nction that you have 
sacrificed the principles of a man of honour to an official expe- 
diency. This sentiment I should have conveyed through my 
friend, but that it might possibly become necessary that our 
communication on this business should be public. 
" I have the honour to be, sir, 

" Your obedient servant, 

"John P. Curran." 

"to JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, ESQ. 

«' Dublin Castle, March 29, 1790. 

"Sir:— 

" Your original application to me, through Mr. Egan, was, 

that Mr. should be dismissed from the service of Government, 

for the insult which he had offered to you ; or that Government 
should co-operate with you in preferring a complaint to the House 
of Commons against liim for a breach of their privileges. This 
application was, on the face of it, official ; and, in answer to it, I 
pointed out to you, by direction of his Excellency, the Lord Lieu- 
tenant, the only mode by which you could have the redress you 
liad sought for the outrage of which you had complained. You 
have now thought fit to desert the mode of official proceeding, 
and to couple a personal attack against me with an appeal to the 
public. 

" Whatever are your hopes and motives in such conduct, be 
assured that the attempt of making your cause the cause of the 
public will never succeed. The public will never believe that I 
could have directly or indirectly instigated any man to insult you. 
They will see that the regular mode of redress was open to you, 



MAJoit iiobart's letter. 153 

even tlie redress you at first affected to seek. You will never 
fasten a belief on the public that any man was mad enough to 
insult a member of Parliament, merely for his having accused the 
Government of prodigality in rewarding him : nor Avill all your 
ingenuity serve to entangle me in that transaction, merely because 

you are pleased to style Mr. my retainer ; or to create a 

persuasion that I am' personally responsible for the resentment of 
a servant of the Government, who w^as placed in the situation 
which he now fills many years before I came into ofiice. The 
public will view this matter in its true light ; and they will clearly 
perceive, what no man can ever justify, that you have transferred 
to me the quarrel which another has provoked, for no one reason, 
but because you think it politic so to do. 

"Your parade of the resentments which you boast to have 
excited by your public conduct, and your insinuation that an 
attempt at personal intimidation was part of the plan of Govern- 
ment, I cannot condescend to notice. The public will never be 
the dupes of such a paltry affectation, to give a popular com- 
plexion to your quarrel. 

" As to your charge of my having sacrificed the principles of a 
man of honour to political expediency, the motive of the accusa- 
tion is too evident to demand a reply. I trust to my own charac- 
ter for its refutation. 

" I pity the condition of any man who feels himself reduced to 
the desperate expedient of endeavouring to wipe oft' the affi'onts 
and insults he has submitted to from others, by forcing a quarrel 
upon a man Vvlio never injured him in the remotest degree ; and I 
am at a loss to conceive how such a conduct can be reconciled to 
the principles or feelings of a gentleman or a man of honour. 

" Perhaps a man in a public situation, and who has given no 
offence, might be well justified in appealing to the laws, if he 
should be personally called upon. I do not mean, sir, to avail 
myself of your example. You say, sir, that it may be necessary 
that the communication on this subject should be public: had 



154 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

you not said so, my answer to you would have been sliort, indeed. 
I have the honour to be 

" Your obedient, humble servant, 

"K. HOBART. 

" P. S. — Having put you in possession of my sentiments, I shall 
consider it unnecessary to answer any more letters." 

"to the right HOX. major nOBART.* 

March 30, 1790. 

" Sir, 

" As I wish to stand justified to the public and to you for 
having had recourse to you on the present extraordinary 
occasion, I beg leave once more to trouble you with a few lines, 
to which no answer can be necessary. They will be addressed to 
you in that temper which the general purport of the last letter I 
had the honour to receive entitles you to expect. 

"An unparalleled outrage was offered to me — the person 
was beneath my resentment. In this very difficult situation 
to whom could I resort but his masters ? and if to them, to whom 
but the first ? . 

" I never charged you, sir, with instigating that man to such an 
act ; but am sorry that I cannot add, that such a part has 
been taken to punish him as was necessary to acquit all your 
administration. I know perfectly well you found him in office, 
and also in certain lower confidential departments, which are 
more easily understood than expressed ; and my complaint Avas, 
that, after such gross misconduct, he continued there. 

" I beg leave to remind you, that I did not say that any 
man v/as mad enough to insult a Member of Parliament, merely 
for accusing Government of prodigality in rewarding him ; but I 

* Major Hobart was son of and successor to the third Earl of Buckinghamshire, and 
died in 1816.— M. 



HOB ART AND CURRAN. 155 

did say, and must repeat, that the insult upon me was made 
in consequence of my having arraigned the prodigahty of 
rewarding sicch a man for such services. Permit me to add, 
that you cannot but have reason to beheve this to be the 
fact. Some of your Court have talked freely upon the sub- 
ject ; and the man, by his own application of the word, has 
acknowledged his vocation and his connexion. 

" I must still continue to think, that what you are pleased to 
call a quarrel is nothing but the result of my public con- 
duct. Sure I am that I should have escaped the attacks that 
have been made upon my person and character, and this last 
among others, if that conduct had been less zealous and decided. 

" As to your charge of my forcing a quarrel upon a man — 
" who never in the remotest degree injured you" — there is 
something in the expression which, I acknowledge, excites in 
my mind a very lively concern. And it is an aggravation of the 
outrage upon me, that it left me no resort, save one painful to my 
feelings, but necessary to my situation. 

"As to the insinuation which accompanies your expression of 
regret, I am sorry it should have escaped from Major Hobart. 
He cannot seriously mean that I should squander my person upon 
every ruffian who may make an attempt upon my life. In 
the discharge of political and professional duties, every man must 
expect to excite enemies. I cannot hope to be more for- 
tunate ; but I shall commit myself only with such as cannot 
disgrace me. A farther answer may be necessary to this part of 
your letter ; but that, as it cannot be so properly conveyed 
in writing, my friend, Mr. Egan, will have the honour to explain. 
" I have the honour to be, sir, 

" Your obedient servant, 

" J. P. CURRAN." 

A duel immediately followed, in which neither party received 
any injury. 



15G LIFE OF CURE AN. 

Ill reviewing this transaction, it would not be difficult for any- 
one, who should feel so disposed, to produce many arguments in 
support of the conclusion, that Mr. Curran's demand of per- 
sonal satisfaction from the Irish minister was a departure from 
the usages of public life. Such a person would, however, leave 
out of his consideration the circumstances that provoked and that 
could justify such a proceeding — the inliamed state of the times 
— the previous debate in parliament — the minister's tacit sanction 
of the menaces of his adherents — and Mr. Curran's remonstrance 
upon the occasion not having produced an observation that 
could deter the future insulter. The latter was the view which 
convinced himself and his friends that it was only by some 
such decisive measure as that Avhich he adopted that the 
privileges and persons of his party could be secured from farther 
violence. The particulars of the affair, however, are given here, 
not as a subject of controversy, but as a striking public fact, and 
an event in Mr. Curran's political life. 



Mr. Curran's dispute and frequent collisions in Parliament with 
Mr. Fitzgibbon have been already adverted to ; and, in what has 
been hitherto related, the conduct of neither party has appeared 
marked by any peculiar aggravations ; but the latter having now 
become Chancellor of Ireland,"''^' Lord Clare remembered the 
resentments of Mr. Fitzgibbon, and avenged the wounds he had 
received in the senate by excluding Mr. Curran from all practice 
in his court.f Such a mode of reprisals has been generally 

* He was appointed in June, 17S0, and was then called to tlie House of Lords as Baron 
Fitzgibbon, of Lower Connello, county of Limerick. In 1793, he was created Viscount 
Fitzgibbon, and in 1795, Earl of Clare, all in the Peerage of Ireland. In 1799, he was 
made a Baron in the Peerage of Great Britain, and died in 1802.— :M. 

t Tills was effected by letting the public see that Mr. Curran had not (in the technical 
phrase) t?ie ear of the court— a.r\d in this Lord Clare so entirely succeeded, that in a very 
little time no client would venture to entrust a Chancery cause of any importance to the 
discountenanced advocate. Mr. Curran's loss of professional income was extreme. 



JUSTICE. 157 

repreliended as merely unmanly and ungenerous, but it was 
a great deal more. The misconduct of persons in elevated 
stations is seldom canvassed with the rigour necessary to their 
perfect reprobation. So much does Power impose upon the 
understandings of men, that, almost trembling to scrutinize the 
offences that should be most exposed, they are rather satis- 
fied to consider the enjoyment of high trust as a kind of apology 
for its violation. A judge setting his face against a particu- 
lar advocate does not commit a simple act of unkindness or inde- 
corum ; he offers as criminal an outrage as can be imagined 
to the most sacred privileges of the community. The claim 
of the subject to be heard with impartiality is not derived 
from the favour of the judge ; it is a right, as independent of per- 
sons, and as sanctioned by law, as that which entitles the judge to 
sit upon the bench : it is the bounden duty of the latter to afford 
an honest, unbiassed attention to every suitor in his court, 
or (what is equivalent) to such counsel as the suitor appoints to 
represent himself: when the judge, therefore, from motives 
of private or political dislike, refuses, on hearing of a cause, the 
fullest indulgence that legal proceedings admit, he not only 
unworthily marks out an obnoxious individual as the victim 
of his own angry passions, diminishing his credit, and thereby, 
perhaps, depriving him of his bread; but as far as in him 
lies, he directly tends to defraud the unoffending subject of 
his property, or his reputation, or his life ; he does the same 
indirectly, by compelling the advocate, if he has a spark of 
the spirit befitting liis station, to exhaust in resistance to such 
unseemly partiality a portion of that time and vigour which 
should be exclusively appropriated to the service of his client. 
These scenes of indecent strife too inevitably strip the seats 
of law of their character and influence ; for Vvdio can look 
up with confidence or respect to a tribunal, where he sees faction 

There was an immediate diminution of £1,000 a year, which the Court of Chancery 
alone had produced ; and this an increasing jncorae. The aggregate of his loss he 
always estimated at £80,000.— C. 



158 LIFE OF CUKKAX. 

domineering* over equity, and the minister of justice degraded 
into a partizan ? 

This flagrant abuse of the judicial functions by Lord Clare has 
never incurred, in Ireland, all the odium that it merited — with 
his admirers it was a speck upon the sun, and his enemies had 
deeper crimes to execrate. The widely ditFerent deportment of 
his successors has also removed all present apprehensions of a 
repetition of such scenes ; still the vicious model may find its 
imitators — the tramplers upon human rights are not peculiar to 
any generation ; and wherever they do appear, their exposure 
should be insisted on as a future protection to the public ; the 
characters of such men should be rendered an antidote to their 
example. 

For this deadly injury inflicted on him by the highest law- 
ofiicer in the kingdom, Mr. Curran was not tardy in taking signal 
vengeance. He saw that his enemy had advanced too far to 
recede — he disdained to conciliate him by submission or by mild 
expostulation. To have acted with forbearance, or even with 
temper, (however amiable and prudent, had it been a private 
case) would have been in the present one, as he considered it, a 
desertion of wdiat w^as to him above every personal consideration, 
of a great constitutional principle, involving the rights and secu- 
rities of the client, and the honour and independence of the Irish 
bar. He w^as not insensible (it could hardly be expected that he 
should) to such an invasion of his feelings and his income ; but 
in resisting it as he did, with scorn and exposure, he felt that he 
was assuming the proud attitude of a public man, contending 
against a noxious system of " frantic encroachments," of which he 
w^as the accidental victim ; and that the result, however unproduc- 
tive to his private interests, would, at least, show that the advo- 
cate w^as not to be scared from the performance of his duty by 
the terrors of contumely or pecuniary loss ; and that though the 
judge might be for the moment victorious in the contest, his vic- 
tory should cost him dear. 

The opportunities of hurling direct defiance at Lord Clare 



DUBLIN MAYORALTY. 150 

might liave now been rare. Tliey could no longer meet in tlio 
House of Commons ; and the Chancellor provided against a fre- 
quent intercourse in his court ; '^ but an extraordinary occasion soon 
presented itself, and enabled the injured advocate to execute his 
objects of retaliation, in the dignified character of a public aven- 
ger, before an audience where every blow was more public and 
more humiliating. 

The Lord Mayor of the city of Dublin is chosen by the Board of 
Aldermen, whose choice is confirmed, or disapproved, by the Com- 
mon Council. In the year 1*790 [April IGth,] the board elected a 
person (Alderman James) whom the Commons, without assigning 
the reasons of their disapprobation, successively rejected. f Their 
real motive was a determination to continue rejecting the names 
returned to them, until the election of the Aldermen should fall 
upon a person attaclied to the popular cause. The Board per- 
ceiving this, and denying that the Common Council had such a 
right of capricious rejection, returned no more, and broke up 
without having duly elected a Lord Mayor. Upon this the 
Sheriffs and Commons (according to the law that provided for 
such an event) proceeded to elect one, and fixed upon a popular 
candidate. Alderman Howison.t 



* The occasional style of their warfare in the Court of Chancery, for the little time 
til at Mv. Curran continued to be employed tliere, raay be collected from the following 
instance. Lord Clare had a favourite dog that sometimes followed him to the bench. 
One day, during an argument of Mr. Curran's, the Chancellor, in the spirit of habitual 
petulance which distinguished him, instead of attending to the argument, turned his head 
aside and began to fondle the dog. The counsel stopped suddenly in the middle of a 
sentence — the judge started. " 1 beg pardon," said Mr. Curran, " I thouglit your Lordships 
had been in consultation ; but as you have been pleased to resume your attention, allow 
me to impress upon your excellent understandings, that" — &c. — C. 

t The fact is, the burgesses of Dublin in their guilds had pledged themselves not to 
return any one as Lord Mayor or Member of Parliament for the city, who held place or 
pension from the government. Alderman James wa3 doubly obnoxious — first as a place- 
holder and next from the nature of his place, — Commissionership of Police. — M. 

+ Howison was elected by SI votes to 8. Napper Tandy led the popular party — Gilford 
headed the Opposition in the Common Council. The Aldermen again elected Alderman 
James. This led to the appeal to the Privy Council, on petition from James, who con- 
tended that the Commons could not legally reject without assigning a cause. — M. 



160 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 

This contest between the Board of Aldermen and the Commons, 
after having undergone much violent discussion, and excited the 
utmost agitation in the metropolis, was now brought before the 
Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council (at which Lord Clare presided 
as Lord Chancellor) for their final decision. The Council Cham- 
ber was thrown open as a public court. The concourse of spec- 
tators, among wliom were the most opulent and respectable citizens 
of Dublin, was immense. The question before the Court was to 
be the mere legal construction of an act of parliament,* but the 
Chancellor and the Ministry notoriously favored the pretensions of 
the Board of Aldermen, so that the question before the public was 
whether the rights of the city were to be treated with constitu- 
tional respect, or to be crushed by the despotic power of the 
Castle.f 

Upon this solemn and vital question, Mr. Curran appeared as 
one of the leading counsel for the Commons and the object of 
their choice, Alderman Howison. He had not proceeded far in 
his argument before he showed that he did not mean to confine it 
to the literal and technical interpretation of a statute ; but that, 
looking at the question as the public did, he should raise it from a 
cold legal discussion into a great constitutional struggle between 
the prinleges of the subject and the influence of the Irish Ministry. 
But he could not have taken a more infallible method of soon re- 
ducing it from a question of law, or of principle, into a personal 
contest between himself and the aristocratic Chancellor. Accord- 

* The 33d of George II., c. 16.— M. 

t Grattan, Lord Charlemont, Lord Perry, Lord Carhampton, the Viceroy, and others 
attended. Fitzgibbon presided as Lord Chancellor. Evidence was heard for both sides. 
The Privy Council decided for a new electioa. The Aldermen re-elected James, and the 
Common Council again elected Howison. Two new petitions were sent in. On June 7th, 
1790, counsel were heard by the Privy Council for James and Howison, respectively. The 
former decision was repeated, — the election went as before. On July 10th, when the case 
came before the Privy Council for the third time, Curran made the speech, given in the 
text, in which he attacked the Lord Chancellor. Eventuallj', the Privy Council gave a 
decision in favour of James, who resigned, and both parties then agreed on electing 
Howison, the popular man, whom the Privy Council were compelled to approve of, his 
character and claims being unexceptionable. — M. 



SIR CONST AXTIJSTE PHIPPS. 161 

ingly, their liostility immediately burst fortli in the interruptions 
of the judge, and the contemptuous indiiference with which they 
were treated by the advocate. A_t length, the latter (by way of 
allusion to the unconstitutional conduct of a former chancellor, 
Sir Constantine Phipps, upon a similar occasion) proceeded to draw 
the following picture of his irritated enemy, in his own presence, 
and in that of the assembled conmiunity/''' 

" On grounds like these, for I can conceive no other, do I sup- 
pose the rights of the city were defended in the time to which I 
have alluded ; for it appears, by the records v/hich I have read, 
that the city was then heard by her counsel ; she was not denied 
the form of defence, though she was denied the benefit of the law. 
In this very chamber did the Chancellor and Judges sit, with all 
the gravity and affected attention to arguments in favour of that 
liberty and those rights which they had conspired to destroy. 
But to what end, my lords, ofter argument to such men ? A little 
and a peevish mind may be exasperated, but how shall it be cor- 
rected by refutation ? How fruitless would it have been to repre- 
sent to that wTetched Chancellor that he was betraying those 
rights which he was sworn U) maintain ; that he was involving a 
government in disgrace, and a kingdom in panic and consterna- 
tion ; that he was violating every sacred duty, and every solemn 

* The person who was the most zealous in exciting a spirit of opposition in the Com- 
mon Council was Mr. Tandy, a member of the Whig Club. Mr. Grattan, one of the most 
distinguished members of the same association, speaks thus of the above transaction : — "An 
attaclv was made on the rights of the city. A doctrine was promulgated, that the Common 
Council had no right to put a negative on the Lord Mayor chosen by the Board of Aldermen, 
except the board itself should assent to the negative put on its own choice. This doctrine 
was advanced by the court, to secure the election of the mayor to itself. In the course 
of the contest, the Minister involved himself in a personal altercation with the citizens; 
with Mr. Tandy he had carried on a long war, and with various success. In the compass 
of his wrath, he paid his compliments to the Whig Club, and that club advanced the 
shield of a free people over the rights of the city, and humbled the minister, in the pre- 
sence of those citizens, whose privileges he had invaded, and whose persons he had 
calumniated." — Answer to Lord Clarets PampJilet. 

Alderman Ilowison's counsel, Mr. Curran, and the late Mr. George Ponsonby (after- 
wards Chancellor) were members of the Whig Club, and refused to accept any remunera- 
tion for their exertions upon this occasion. — C. 



1G2 LIFE OF GURRAN. 

engagement that bound liim to himself, his country, his sovereign, 
and his God ! Alas ! my lords, by what arguments could any man 
hope to reclaim or to dissuade a mean, illiberal, and unprincipled 
minion of authority, induced by his profligacy to undertake, and 
bound by his avarice and vanity to persevere ? He would proba- 
bly have replied to the most unanswerable arguments by some 
curt, contumelious, and unmeaning apothegm, delivered with the 
fretful smile or irritated self-sufficiency and disconcerted arro- 
gance : or even if he could be dragged by his fears to a considera- 
tion of the question, by what miracle could the pigmy capacity of 
a stunted pedant be enlarged to a reception of the subject? The 
endeavour to approach it would have only removed him to a 
greater distance than he was before, as a little hand that strives to 
grasp a mighty globe is thrown back by the reaction of its own 
efforts to comprehend. It may be given to an Hale or an Hard- 
wicke to discover and retract a mistake : the errors of such men 
are only specks that arise for a moment upon the surface of a 
splendid luminary : consumed by its heat, or irradiated by its 
light, they soon purge and disappear ; but the perversenesses of a 
mean and narrow intellect are like the excrescences that grow 
upon a body naturally cold and dark ; — no fire to waste them, and 
no ray to enlighten, they assimilate and coalesce with those quali- 
ties so congenial to their nature, and acquire an incorrigible per- 
manency in the union with kindred frost and kindred opacity. 
Nor, indeed, my lords, excej^t where the interest of millions can 
be affected by the folly or the vice of an individual, need it be 
much regretted, that to things not worthy of being made better, 
it hath not pleased Providence to afford the privilege of improve- 
ment." 

Lord Clare."^ — " Surely, Mr. Curran, a gentleman of your emi- 
nence in your profession must see that the conduct of former 
Privy Councils has nothing to do with the question before us. 

* He was only Baron Fitzgibbon at the time, not being created Earl of Clare until 
1705.— M. 



THE EETUEN GAME. 163 

The question lies in tlie narrowest compass ; it is merely whether 
the Commons have a right of arbitrary and capricious rejection, 
or are obliged to assign a reasonable cause for their disapproba- 
tion. To that point you have a right to be heard, but I hope you 
do not mean to lecture the Council." 

Mr. Curran. — " I mean, my lords, to speak to the case of my 
clients, and to avail myself of every topic of defence which I con- 
ceive applicable to that case. I am not speaking to a dry point 
of law, to a single judge, and on a mere forensic subject ; I am 
addressing a very large auditory, consisting of co-ordinate mem- 
bers, of whom the far greater number is not versed in law. Were 
I to address such an audience on the interests and rights of a 
great city, and address them in the hackneyed style of a pleader, 
I should make a very idle display of profession, with very little 
information to those I address, or benefit to those on whose behalf 
I have the honour to be heard. I am aware, my lords, that truth 
is to be sought only by slow and painful progress : I know also 
that error is in its nature flippant and compendious ; it hops with 
airy and fastidious levity over proof s and arguments^ and perches 
upon assertion^ which it calls conclusion^ 

Here Mr. Curran's triumph over his proud enemy was com- 
plete. The sarcastic felicity of this description of the unfavour- 
able side of Lord Clare's mind and manner was felt by the w^hole 
audience. The Chancellor immediately moved to have the cham- 
ber cleared, and during the exclusion of strangers was understood 
to have ineffectually endeavoured to prevail upon the Council to 
restrain the advocate from proceeding any further in that mode 
of argument which had given him so much offence. 

From this period till the year 1*794, Mr. Curran's public his- 
tory consists principally of his Parliamentary exertions. The 
Opposition " persisted to combat the project to govern Ireland 
by corruption : " for this purpose they brought forward a series of 
popular measures f' in the support of all of which Mr. Curran 

* The most important of these were Mr. Forbes's motion for a place bill, Mr. Grattan's 



164: LIFE OF CURRAN. 

took a leading part.* Lord Charlemont's biographer, who heard 
him upon all those occasions, says of him, " That he animated 

for an inquiiy into the sale of Teerages, the Catholic question, Parliamentary Reform. 
The inquiry regarding the sale of Peerages was twice moved ; by Mr. Grattan, in 1790, 
and by Mr. Curran in the following year : both motions failed, although the fullest evi- 
dence of the fact was offered. " I have proof," said Mr. Curran, " and I stake my cha- 
racter on producing such evidence to a committee, as shall fully and incontrovertibly 
establish the fact, that a contract has been entered into with the present ministers to raise 
to the peerage certain persons, on condition of their purchasing a certain number of 
seats in this house." Upon this last occasion Mr. Curran was loudly called to order, for 
having reminded the house, " that they should be cautious in their decision on this 
question for they were in the hearing of a great number of the people of Ireland.'''' 
Mr. Grattan defended the expression, and thought the doctrine of censure passed upon 
it inconsistent with the nature of a popular assembly such as a House of Commons : in sup- 
port of this opinion he quoted an expression of Lord Chatham, who in the house of peers, 
where such language was certainly less proper than in a house of commons, addressed 
the peers, "My Lords, I speak not to your lordships; I speak to the public and to the 
constitution." " The words," added Grattan, "were at first received with some mur- 
murs, but the good sense of the house and the genius of the constitution justified him." 
Mr. Curran, on resuming, repeated the expression, and was again interrupted by violent 
cries to order, which, however, he silenced by observing, " I do not allude to any strangers 
in your gallery, but I allude to the constructive presence of four millions of people, whom 
a Serjeant at arms cannot keep unacquainted with your proceedings." — Irish Pari. Deb., 
1791. 

During the debate upon the same subject in the preceding year, Mr. Grattan produced 
a paper, and read as follows : " We charge them (the Ministers) publicly, in the face of 
their country, with making corrupt agreements for the sale of peerages : for doing which, 
we say that they are impeachable. We charge them with corrupt agreements for the 
disposal of the money arising from the sale, to purchase for the sei-vants of the Castle 
seats in the Assembly of the People ; for which we say that they are impeachable. We 
charge them with committing these offences, not in one, nor in two, but in many 
instances ; for which complication of offences we say that they are impeachable ; guilty 
of a systematic endeavour to undermine the Constitution, in violation of the laws of the 
land. We pledge ourselves to convict them ; we dare them to go into an inquiry ; we do 
not affect to treat them as other than public malefactors ; we speak to them in a style of 
the most mortifying and humiliating defiance ; we pronounce them to be public criminals. 
Will they dare to deny the charge ? I call upon and dare the ostensible member to rise 
in his place and say, on his honour, that he does not believe such corrupt agreements 

* The debates in which, during this period (1791-4), Curran took a leading part were 
on February 12, 1791, when he made a long and powerful attack on the corruption of the 
Irish Government, and being reproved for alluding to strangers in the House, said, " I 
do not allude to strangers in the gallery, but to the constructive presence of the people 
of Ireland ;" on February 18, 1792, when he argued in favour of the removal of 
Pioman Catholic disabilities ; on January 11, 1793, on the approaching war with France ; 
on February 9, 1793, in favor of Parliamentary Reform. — M. 



IN PAKLIAMENT. 165 

every debate with all his powers ; that he was copious, splendid, 
full of wit, and life, and ardour." Of the justice of this praise 
sufficient proofs might be given, even from the loose reports of 
his speeches upon those questions ; but it will be necessary in the 
following pages to offer so many examples of his forensic oratory, 
upon which his reputation so mainly depends, that his efforts in 
Parliament become, as far as his eloquence is concerned, of 
secondary moment, and claim a passing attention, rather with 
reference to his history and conduct, than as necssary to his lite- 
rary fame. 



have taken place. I wait for a specific answer." Major Hobart avoided- a specific 
answer. Six days after, Mr. Grattan, alluding to these charges, observed, " Sir, I have 
been told it was said that I should have been stopped, should have been expelled the 
Commons, should have been delivered up to the bar of the Lords for the expressions 
delivered that day. I will repeat what I said that day.'' After reciting the charges 
seriatim in the same words, he thus concluded, " I repeat these charges now, and if any 
thing more severe was on a former occasion expressed, I beg to be reminded of it, and I 
will again repeat it. Why do you not expel me now ? Why not send me to the bar of 
the Lords? Where is your adviser? Going out of the House, I shall repeat my senti- 
ments, that his Majesty's Ministers are guilty of impeachable offences, and advancing to 
the bar of the Lords, I shall repeat these sentiments ; and if the Tower is to be my habi- 
tation, I will there meditate the impeachment of these Ministers, and return not to capi- 
tulate, but to punish. Sir, I think I know myself well enough to say, that if called forth 
to suffer in a public cause, I will go further than my prosecutors both in virtue and in 
danger." — C. 



166 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

State of parties — Trial of Hamilton Rowan — Mr. Curran's fidelity to his party — Rev. 
William Jackson's Trial, Conviction, and Death — Remarks upon that Trial — Irish 
Informers — Irish Juries — The influence of the times upon Mr. Curran's style of 
Oratory. 

The period was now approacliing which afforded to Mr. Curran's 
forensic talents their most melancholy, but most splendid occa- 
sions of exertion. With this year (1'794) commences the series 
of those historical trials which originated in the distracted con- 
dition of his country, and to the political interest of which his 
eloquence has now imparted an additional attraction. 

From the year 1789 the discontents of Ireland had been 
rapidly increasing ; the efforts of the Opposition in Parliament 
having failed to procure a reform of the abuses and grievances of 
which the nation complained, an opinion soon prevailed through- 
out the community that the Irish Administration had entered 
into a formal design to degrade the country, and virtually to 
annul its lately acquired independence, by transferring the 
absolute dominion over it from the English Parliament, which 
had previously governed it, to the English Cabinet, which was to 
be its future ruler. Without inquiring now into the truth of this 
opinion, it will be sufficient to observe, that, in the agita- 
tion of the many irritating questions that it involved, it 
soon appeared that Ireland had little hope of seeing them termi- 
nated by the gentle methods of argument or persuasion. The 
adherents of the Administration, and their opponents, were agreed 
upon the fact of the universal discontent, and upon the 
dangers that it threatened ; but they differed widely upon 
the measures that should be adopted for the restoration of 
repose. 



THE PAST. 167 

The first Avere determined to use coercion. They seemed 
to think that popuLar excesses are almost solely the people's own 
creation — that they are naturally prone to disaffection — that 
complaints of grievances are resorted to as a mere pretext 
to gratify this propensity ; and, consequently, that a provi- 
dent government should vigourously resist every movement of 
discontent as the fearful tokens of projected revolution. In con- 
formity Avith these opinions it appeared to them that terror alone 
could tranquilize Ireland; and, therefore, that every method of 
impressing upon the public mind the power of the State, no mat- 
ter how unpopular their nature, or how adverse to the estab- 
lished securities of the subject, should be adopted and applauded 
as measures of salutary restraint. 

The truth and expediency of these doctrines were as firmly 
denied by others, who maintained that conciliation alone could 
appease the popular ferment. They deplored the general ten- 
dency to disaftection as notorious and undeniable ; but they con- 
sidered that there would have been more wisdom in prevent- 
ing than in punishing it ; that a very little . wisdom would 
have been sufficient to prevent it ; and that in punishing it now, 
the Ministry were " combating, not causes, but eff'ects." They 
denied that the gTcat mass of the Irish, or of any commu- 
nity, were naturally prone to disaffection. " Their natural 
impulses (they observed, in replying to the advocates of coercion) 
are all the other way." Look into history ; for one revolution, or 
attempt at revolution, of how many long and uninterrupted des- 
potisms do we read ; and, whenever such attempts occur, it 
is easy to assign the cause. There is one, and only one, way 
of measuring the excellence of any Government — by considering 
the condition of the governed. No well governed people will 
desire to exchange real and present blessings for the danger and 
uncertainty of remote and fantastic speculations : and if ever 
they are found to commit their lives and fortunes to such despe- 
rate experiments, it is the most conclusive evidence that they are 



168 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

badly governed, and that their sufferings have impelled them " to 
rise up in vengeance, to rend their chains upon the heads of their 
oppressors." Look to the neighbouring example of France, 
and see what abominations an infuriated populace may be 
brought to practise upon their rulers and upon themselves. Let 
Ireland be saved from the possibility of such a crisis. The 
majority of its people are in a state of odious exclusion, visiting 
them in its daily consequences with endless insults and pri- 
vations, which, being minute and individual, are only the more 
intolerable. Would it not be wise then, to listen to their claim 
of equal privileges, which, if granted, would give you the strong- 
est security for their loyalty ? There are other grievances — 
the notorious corruption of the legislature — the enormity of the 
Pension List — and many more — of these the nation com- 
plains, and seems determined to be heard.* The times are pecu- 
liar ; and, if the popular cry be not the voice of wisdom, it should 
at least be that of warning. The mind of all Europe is greatly 
agitated : a general distrust of Governments has gone abroad ; 
let that of Ireland exhibit such an example of -vdrtue and mode- 
ration, as may entitle it to the confidence of the people. The 
people seem inclined to turbulence; but treat it as a disease 



♦Every session the Opposition, again and again, pressed upon the Ministers the dan- 
gers to which their system was exposing the State. Thus Mr. Grattan observed, early 
in 1793, " They (the Ministers) attempted to put down the Constitution ; but now they 
liave put down the Government. We told them so — we admonished them — we told them 
their driving would not do. Do not they remember how in 1790 we warned them ? They 
said we were severe — I am sure we were prophetic. In 1791 we repeated our admoni- 
tion — told them that a Government of clerlvs would not do — that the Government of the 
Treasury would not do — that Ireland would not long be governed by the trade of Parlia- 
ment ; we told them that a nation, which had rescued her liberty from the giant of Old 
England, would not long bear to be trodden on by the violence of a few pigmies, whom 
the caprice of a Court had appointed Ministers." Mr. Curran's language was equally 
emphatic — " Ireland thinks, that, without an immediate reform, her liberty is gone — I 
think so too. While a single guard of British freedom, either internal or external, 
is wanting, Ireland is in bondage. She looks to us for her emancipation. She expects 
not impossibilities from us — but she expects honesty and plain dealing ; and, if she finds 
them not, remember what I predict — she will abominate her Parliament, and look for a 
reform to herself."— Pari. Deb., 1793.— C. 



HAMILTON KOWAN. 169 

rather than avenge it as a crime. }3etween a State and its 
subjects there should be no silly punctilio ; their errors can never 
justify yours : you may coerce — you may pass intemperate laws, 
and unheard-of tribunals, to punish what you should have 
averted — you may go on to decimate, but you will never tran- 
quilize." 

These were in substance the views and arguments of the 
minority in the Irish House of Commons, and of the more 
reflecting and unprejudiced of the Irish community ; but such 
mild doctrines had little influence with that assembly, or with the 
nation. By the Parliament the few that advanced them were 
regarded as the advocates of the existing disorders, because they 
ventured to explain their origin, and to recommend the only 
cure ; while the people were industriously taught to withdraw 
their confidence from public men, who, instead of justifying the 
popular resentments by more unequivocal co-operation, were 
looking forward to the impending crisis as an object of apprehen- 
sion, and not of hope. 

Such was the condition of the public mind — the Government 
depending upon force — the People familiarising themselves to pro- 
jects of resistance — and several speculative and ambitious men of 
the middle classes watching, with yet unsettled views, over the 
fermenting elements of revolution, until it should appear how far 
they could w^ork themselves into union and consistency, wdien Mr. 
Archibald Hamilton Rowan* published an adress to the Volun- 
teers of Ireland, setting forth the dangers with which the country 
was threatened from foreign and domestic foes, and inviting them 
to resume their arms for the preservation of the general tran- 
quillity. This publication was prosecuted by the state as a sedi- 



* Mr. Rowan was secretary to the Society of United Irishmen in Dublin. It is proper 
to observe here, that this was one of the original societies of that denomination, whose 
views did not extend beyond a constitutional reform. They have been sometimes con- 
founded with the subsequent associations, which, under the same popular appellation, 
aimed at a revolution.— C. 

8 



170 LIFE OF CUKEAI,". 

tious libel, and Mr, Curran -vvas selected by Mr. Rowan to conduct 
his defence. 

The speech in defence of Hamilton Rowan has been generally 
considered as one of Mr. Curran's ablest efforts at the bar. It is 
one of the few that has been correctly reported ; and to that cir- 
cumstance is, in some degree, to be attributed its apparent supe- 
riority. Notwithstanding the enthusiastic applause which its 
delivery excited, he never gave it any peculiar preference himself. 

The opening of it has some striking points of resemblance to 
the exordium of Cicero's defence of Milo. If an imitation was 
intended by the Irish advocate, it was very naturally suggested 
by the coincidence of the leading topics in the two cases — the 
public interest excited — the unusual military array in the court — 
the great popularity of the clients — and the factious clamours which 
preceded their trials."^ 

" When I consider the period at wdiich this prosecution is 
brought forward — when I behold the extraordinary safeguard of 
armed soldiers resorted to, no doubt, for the preservation of peace 
and order — w^hen I catch, as I cannot but do, the throb of public 
anxiety, that beats from one end to the other of this hall — w^hen 
I reflect on what may be the fate of a man of the most beloved 
personal character, of one of the most respected families of 
our country, himself the only individual of that family, I may 
almost say of that country — who can look to that possible fate 
with unconcern ? Feeling, as I do, all these impressions, it is in 
the honest simplicity of my heart I speak, when I say that I never 
rose in a court of justice with so much embarrassment as on this 
occasion. 

* Nam ilia praesidia, quse pro templis omnibus cernitis, etsi contra vim coUocata sunt, 
nobis afferunt tamen horroris aliquid : neque eorum quisquam, quos undique intuentes 
cernitis, unde aliqua pars fori adspici potest, et hiyus exitum judicii expectantes, non cum 
virtuti Milonis fa vet, tum de se, de liberis suis, de patria, de fortunis hodierno die decer- 
tari putat. 

Unum genus est adversum infestumque nobis eorum, quos P. Clodil furor rapinls et 
Incendiis et omnibus exitiis publicis pavit ; qui hesterna etiam concione incitati sunt, ut 
vobis voce prselrent, quid judicaretis.— 0. 



THE DEFENCE. 171 

" If, gentlemen, I could entertain a hope of finding refuge for 
the disconcertion of my own mind in the perfect composure of 
yours ; if I could suppose that those awful vicissitudes of human 
events tliat have been stated or alluded to, could leave your judg- 
ments undisturbed or your hearts at ease, I know I should form a 
most erroneous opinion of your character, I entertain no such 
chimerical hope — I form no such unworthy opinion — I expect not 
that your hearts can be more at ease than my own — I have no 
right to expect it ; but I have a right to call upon you in the 
name of your country, in the name of the living God, of whose 
eternal justice you are now administering that portion which 
dwells with us on this side of the grave, to discharge your breasts, 
as far as you are able, of every bias of prejudice or passion — 
that, if my client be guilty of the offence charged upon him, you 
may give tranquillity to the public by a firm verdict of conviction ; 
or, if he be innocent, by as firm a verdict of acquittal ; and that 
you will do this in defiance of the paltry artifices and senseless 
clamours that have been resorted to, in order to bring him to his 
trial with anticipated conviction. And, gentlemen, I feel an 
additional necessity of thus conjuring you to be upon your guard, 
from the able and imposing statement which you have just heard 
on the part of the prosecution. I know well the virtues and talents 
of the excellent person who conducts that prosecution.* I know 
how much he would disdain to impose on you by the trappings of 
office; but I also know how easily we mistake the lodgment 
Avhich character and eloquence can make upon our feelings, for 
those impressions that reason, and fact, and proof only ought to 
work upon our understandings." 

When Mr. Curran came to observe upon that part of the pub- 
lication under trial, which proposed complete Emancipation to 
persons of every religious persuasion, he expressed himself as 
follows : 

"Do you think it wise or humane, at this moment, to insult 

* The Attorney-Genera!, Mr. Wolfe, afterwards Lord Kilwarden.— 0. 



172 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

them (the Catliolics) by sticking up in the pillory the man who 
dared to stand forth as their advocate ? I put it to your oaths , 
do you think that a blessing of that kind, tiiat a victory obtained 
by justice over bigotry and oppres.sion, should have a stigma cast 
upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest 
enouo'h to propose tliat measure ? — to propose the redeeming of 
religion from the abuses of the church, the reclaiming of three 
millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a 
right to demand it ? — Giving, I say, in the so much censured words 
of this paper — giving ' Universal Emancipation ?' 

" I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes Liberty 
commensurate v/ith, and inseparable from, British soil ; which pro- 
claims even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets 
his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is 
holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. 
No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced 
— no matter in what complexion incompatible with freedom, an 
Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him — no matter 
in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down — 
no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon 
the altar of slavery — the first moment he touches the sacred soil 
of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust ; his 
soul walks abroad in her own majesty ; his body swells beyond the 
measure of his chains that burst from around him ; and he stands 
redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius 
of Universal Emancipation." 

There is, farther on, a passage on the freedom of the press, too 
glowing and characteristic to be omitted : 

" If the people say, let us not create tumult, but meet in delega- 
tion, they cannot do it ; if they are anxious to promote parliamen- 
tary reform in that way, they cannot do it ; the law of the last 
session has, for the first time, declared such meetings to be a crime. 
What then remains ? — The liberty of the press only — that sacred 
palladium which no influence, no power, no minister, no govern- 



LTEERTY OF THE PRESS. tY3 

ment, whicli nothing but the depravity, or folly, or corrnjDtion of a 
jury can ever destroy. And what calamities are the people saved 
from, by having public communication left open to them ? I will 
tell you what they are saved from, and what the government is 
saved from. I will tell you also to what both are exposed, by 
shutting up that communication. In one case sedition speaks 
aloud, and walks abroad ; the demagogue goes forth — the public 
eye is upon him — he frets his busy hour upon the stage ; but 
soon either weariness, or bribe, or punishment, or disappointment, 
bear him down, or drive him off, and he appears no more. In the 
other case, how does the work of sedition go forward ? Night 
after night the muffled rebel steals forth in the dark, and casts 
another and another brand upon the pile, to which, when the hour 
of fatal maturity shall arrive, he will apply the flamxC. If you 
doubt of the horrid consequences of suppressing the effusion even 
of individual discontent, look to those enslaved countries, where 
the protection of despotism is supposed to be secured by such re- 
straints. Even the person of the despot there is never in safety. 
Neither the fears of the despot, nor the machinations of the slave, 
have any slumber ; the one anticipating the moment of peril, the 
other watching the opportunity of aggression. The fatal crisis is 
equally a surprise upon both ; the decisive instant is precipitated 
without warning, by folly on the one side, or by phrensy on the 
other ; and there is no notice of the treason till the traitor acts. 
But if you wish for a nearer and more interesting example, you 
have it in the history of your own Revolution ; you have it at that 
memorable period when the monarch found a servile acquiescence 
in the ministers "of his folly — when the liberty of the press was 
trodden under foot — when venal sheriffs returned packed juries, to 
carry into effect those fatal conspiracies of the few against the 
many — when the devoted benches of public justice were filled by 
some of those foundlings of fortune, who, overwhelmed in the tor- 
rent of corruption at an early period, lay at the bottom like 
drowned bodies, while soundness or sanity remained in them ; but, 



iTtt LIFE OF CURE AN. 

at leugth, becoming buoyant by putrefaction, they rose as they 
rotted, and floated to the surface of the polluted stream, where 
they were drifted along, the objects of terror, and contagion, and 
abomination.* 

"In that awful moment of the nation's travail — of the last 
gasp of tyranny and the first breath of freedom, how pregnant is 
the example ? The Press extinguished, the People enslaved, 
and the Prince undone. As the advocate of society, there- 
fore, of peace, of domestic liberty, and the lasting union of the 
two countries, I conjure you to guard the Liberty of the 
Press, that great sentinel of the State, that grand detector of 
public imposture — guard it — because when it sinks there sinks 
wdth it, in one common grave, the liberty of the subject, and the 
security of the Crown." 

The concluding passage of this speech (of which the preceding- 
extracts are inserted merely as examples of its style) contains one 
of those fine Scriptural allusions, of which Mr. Curran made 
such frequent and successful use : 

" I will not relinquish the confidence that this day will be the 
jDeriod of his suflferings ; and however mercilessly he has been 
hitherto pursued, that your verdict will send him home to 
the arms of his family and the wishes of his country. But 
if (which Heaven forbid) it hath still been unfortunately deter- 
mined that, because he has not . bent to power and author- 
ity, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and 
worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace ; I 
do trust in God, that there is a redeeming spirit in the Constitu- 



* Although it has been doubted by some who have observed upon this passage, whether 
its vigour could atone for the images that it presents, it may not be ungratifying to hear 
the manner in which it was suggested to the speaker's mind. A day or two before Mr. 
Rowan's trial, one of Mr. Curran's friends showed him a letter that he had just received 
from Bengal, in which the writer, after mentioning the Hindoo custom of throwing the 
dead into the Ganges, added, that he was then upon the banks of that river, and that, as 
he wrote, he could see several bodies floating down its stream. The orator, shortly after, 
while describing a corrupted bench, recollected this fact, and applied it as above.— C. 



HAMILTON ROWAN. 175 

tion, wbicli will be s^en to walk with the sufferer through the 
flames, and to preserve him unhurt by the conflagration." 

If the expression of excited emotions by the auditors be 
the test of eloquence, this w^as the most eloquent of Mr. Curran's 
forensic productions. To applaud in a court of justice, is at all 
times irregular, and was then very rare ; but both during the 
delivery and after the conclusion of this speech, the by-standers 
could not refrain from testifying their admiration by loud and 
repeated bursts of applause : when the advocate retired from the 
court, they took the horses from his carriage, which they drew to 
his own house ; yet notw^ithstanding this public homage to 
his talents, the most grateful reward of his exertions was 
wanting — the jury, of w^hose purity very general suspicions were 
entertained, found a verdict against his client.^ 

[In the autumn of 1Y92, the Government issued a Proclama- 
tion against the Irish Volunteers, who replied to it, in an address, 
written by Dr. Drennan, and signed by Archibald Hamilton 
Rowan, as Secretary. Both w^ere prosecuted. Rowan, as here 
related, was defended by Curran. It is stated by Thomas Davis 
that he had seen the back of Curran's brief, on which were w^rit- 
ten the catch-words of his speech in this case, viz., *' To Arms — 

* Mr. Rowan was sentenced to fine and imprisonment. In the month of June, 1794, 
Dr. William Drennan was prosecuted for the publication of the same libel. He 
was defended by Mr. Curran, and acquitted ; not, however, on the merits of the imputed 
libel, but on failure of proof that Dr. Drennan had published it. On the first of the pre- 
ceding May, Mr. Rowan effected his escape from prison, and fled to France. After 
a long exile, and many wanderings, he was permitted, a few years ago, to return to his 
country. — C. 

[The reason why Hamilton Rowan escaped from prison was simply this. After 
he was incarcerated, in pursuance to his sentence, the Rev. William Jaci^son, an emissary 
frorathe Committee of Salut Fahlique of Paris, accompanied by one Cockayne (a London 
pettifogging attorney, acting as incendiary and spy for William Pitt, the English Prime 
Minister), visited him in prison, and engaged him rather deeply, and most unsuspect- 
ingly, in the schemes of obtaining French aid for Ireland, in which Jackson was 
interested. On Jackson's arrest, on a charge of high treason, Rowan dreaded the ven- 
geance of tlie Government, and escaped to France. Thence he went to America, 
returned to Europe in 1800, received the King's pardon in 1802, and died in 1S84, at the 
age of eighty-four.— M.] 



ITG LIFE OF CURRAN. 

2iid, Reform — 3rd, Catholic Emancipation — 4th, Convention — 
now unlawful — Consequence of Conviction — Trial before Revolu- 
tion — Lambert — Muir — Character of R. — Furnace, &c. — Rebel- 
lion Smothered Stalks — Redeeming Spirit." 

The trial commenced on January 29th, 1794, Wolfe (Attor- 
ney-General, and afterwards Chief Justice) stated the case. Wit- 
nesses w'ere examined to show Rowan's connexion with the docu- 
ment charged as a seditious libel. Curran's speech (one of 
the best he ever made) then followed, and on its conclusion, 
a shout of admiration and sympathy arose in the crowded Court, 
which the Judge (Lord Clonmel) with difRculty stopped. When 
Curran quitted the Court-house that day, the populace, who 
waited for him, took the horses from his carriage, and drew him 
home. The Attorney-General replied to Curran, vindicating him- 
self from the charge of having unnecessarily and oppressively 
endeavored to delay the trial. The Prime Sergeant (James Fitz- 
gerald, father of O'Connell's vanquished opponent at Clare elec- 
tion in 1828) replied seriatim to Curran. Lord Clonmel charged, 
not only strongly but violently, against Rowan. The jury con- 
victed, after only ten minutes' deliberation. Rowan waived his 
right of taking four days to decide w4iether he would move for an 
arrest of judgment, but Lord Clonmel declined passing sentence 
until the four days had expired, and committed Rowan to prison 
during the interval. 

On February 4, 1*794, how^ever. Rowan's counsel applied to set 
aside the verdict, on several grounds, viz., that one of the jurors, 
before the trial, had made a hostile declaration against the 
prisoner ; that one of the High Sheriffs, who struck the jury 
panel, w^as partial and hostile ; that the principal witness had 
committed perjury ; and that the Judge (Lord Clonmel) had mis- 
directed the jury. The case was argued at great length, by Cur- 
ran, and responded to by the Crown law^yers. On February Y, 
the Judges (Clonmel and Boyd) decided against the applica- 
tion for a new trial. Before sentence was passed, Rowan himself 



DK. DREN^AN. 177 

addressed tlie Court, stating that from his position and large stake 
in the country, he was the last man who could wish for an insur- 
rection. The sentence was a fine of £2,000, two year's imprison- 
ment, and to find security (himself in £2,000, and two others in 
£1,000 each) for his good behaviour for seven years. It had 
been suggested to, and discussed by the Government, whether, to 
make the punishment as exemplary as possible. Rowan should not 
also be put in the ^;/^/or?/. It was feared that this would array 
the gentry against the Crown (the pillory being a punishment for 
criminal and not political ofi'ences), and that the populace would 
not permit it. So the idea was abandoned — if ever seriously 
entertained. 

In April, 1794, Mr. Curran appeared at Drogheda Assizes for 
Patrick Kenna and six others, in a respectable sphere of life 
(commonly called "The Drogheda Defenders"), for seditiously 
conspiring to raise a levy war and insurrection against the King. 
They were acquitted, whereupon the Crown withdrew their 
indictments against other persons. 

In May, 1794, when the proprietors of the Northern Star (a 
Belfast liberal paper) were prosecuted for publishing " wicked and 
seditious Kbels," as many as seven informations were filed, but only 
one brought to trial. Curran, for the defence, raised the point that 
there was no evidence that twelve of them were guilty of a deed not 
done by themselves. The sole printer (John Rabb) was convicted ; 
all the rest, by direction of the court, were acquitted. The defence 
of Rabb was that the publication was no libel. The mere cost of 
the license (£10 in each case) for Mr. Curran, the King's Counsel, 
to plead against the Crown, on the seven informations, was £70. 

In June, 1794, Doctor William Drennau, who, as Chairman of 
the meeting of Volunteers, had signed the Counter-proclamation, 
for issuing which (as Secretary) Rowan had been tried, convicted, 
fined and imprisoned, was put on his trial for having published that 
document, which was declared to be " a seditious libel." Lord Clon- 
mel, Mr. Justice (afterwards Lord) Downes and Mr. Justice Cham- 



178 LIFE OF CUKEAN". 

berlain were the judges. Sir John Trail, was objected to by Mr. 
Curran — on the ground that he had formed an opinion on the 
subject of the prosecution. The Crown-Lawyer not allowing him 
to be sworn to ascertain the truth of this, from his own lips, the 
Knight was sworn on the jury and became its foreman. The 
evidence was inconclusive, Aveak, and insuflicient. Curran 
addressed the jury at considerable length. The Prime Sergeant 
replied angrily. The judges charged hostilely. The jury returned 
a verdict of "Not guilty," and when this was received with 
applause. Trail (the foreman), called the spectators " an unruly 
and seditious rabble," adding the regret of the jury " at seeing a 
criminal they cannot reach — and guilt which they cannot 
punish."]* 

In the beginning of the year 1195, Lord Fitzwilliam having 
become Viceroy of Ireland, Mr. Curran was upon the point of 
being raised to the situation of Solicitor-General ; but the 
sudden recall of that nobleman defeated this, as well as many 
other projected changes. 

It should be mentioned here, that from the year 1*789, frequent 
attempts were made by the adherents of the Administration to 
detach Mr. Curran from the party which he had formally joined, at 
that period. Every motive of personal ambition was held out to 
allure him, and all the influence of private solicitations exerted, but 
in vain. About this time, when the general panic w^as daily thin- 
ning the ranks of the Opposition, his most intimate and attached 
friend, the late Lord Kihvarden (then the Attorney-General) 
frequently urged him to separate himself from a hopeless cause, 
and to accept the rewards and honours that were so open 



* Dr. Drennan, the accused, was the author of " Letters of Orellana, an Irish 
ITelot," in a Belfast paper, in which he strenuously urged the necessity of Parliamentary 
Reform. He was one of the earliest and most zealous promoters of the Society of United 
Irishmen, and author of the well-known test of their confederacy. He wrote some 
admirable Letters to Pitt and Fox against the Union. In the song of "Erin to her own 
tune ?" he first spoke of Ireland as " the Emerald Isle." "Who has not heard his " When 
Erin first rose." He died in 1820.— M. 



Jackson's trial. 179 

to him. Upon one occasion, when Mr. Curran was confined 
by illness to his bed, that gentleman visited him, and renew- 
ing the subject, with tears in his eyes, implored him to consult 
his interest and his safety : " I tell you (said Mr. Wolfe) that you 
liave attached yourself to a desperate faction, that will aban- 
don you at last ; with whom you have nothing to expect but dan- 
ger and disappointment. With us, how different would be your 
condition — I ask for no painful stipulations on your part, only say 
that you would accept of office — my situation will probably soon 
be vacant for you, and after that, the road would be clear before 
you." This proof of private affection caused Mr. Curran to weep, 
but he was unshaken. He replied, "that he knew, better 
than his friend could do, the men with whom he was associated ; 
that they were not a desperate faction ; that their cause was that 
of Ireland, and that even though it should eventually be branded 
with the indelible stigma of failure, he should never regret 
that it w^as with such men, and such a cause, that he had linked his 
final destinies." 



TRIAL OF THE REV. W. JACKSON. 

The next state trial of importance in which Mr. Curran was 
engaged, was that of Mr. William Jackson, a case of which some 
of the attending circumstances were so singular, that they cannot 
be omitted here. 

Mr. Jackson was a clerg-yman of the established church ; he 
was a native of Ireland, but had for several years resided out of 
that country. A part of his life was spent in the family of the 
noted Duchess of Kingston, and he is said to have been the per- 
son who conducted that lady's controversy with the celebrated 
Foote.* At the period of the French Revolution, he passed over 
Paris, where he formed political connections with the ruling 

• Poote, at the close of his letter to her Grace, observes : " pray, madam, is not J -n 



180 LITE OF CrKRAX. 

powers there: from France lie returned to London in 1*794, for 
tlie purpose of procuring information as to the practicability of an 
invasion of England, and was thence to proceed to Ireland on a 
similar mission. Upon his arrival in London, he renewed an inti- 
macy vrith a person named Cockayne, who had formerly been his 
friend and confidential attorney. The extent of his communica- 
tions, in the first instance, to Cockayne did not exactly appear ; the 
latter, liowever, was prevailed upon to write the directions of seve- 
ral of Jackson's letters, containing treasonable matters, to his cor- 
respondents abroad ; but in a little time, either suspecting or 
repenting that he had been furnishing evidence of treason against 
himself, he revealed to the British minister, Mr. Pitt, all that he 
knew or conjectured relative to Jackson's objects. By the desire of 
Mr. Pitt, Cockayne accompanied Jackson to Ireland, to watch and 
defeat his designs, and as soon as the evidence of his treason was 
mature, announced himself as a witness for the Crown. Mr. 
Jackson was accordingly arrested, and committed to stand his 
trial for high treason. 

It did not appear that he had been previously connected with 
any of the political fraternities then so prevalent in Ireland, but 
some of them took so deep an interest in his fate, that the night 
before his trial, four persons of inferior condition, members of 
those societies, formed a plan (which, however, proved abortive) 
to seize and carry off Cockayne, and perhaps to dispatch him, in 
order to deprive the Government of the benefit of his testimony.* 

Mr. Jackson was committed to prison in April, 1794, but his 



the name of j'our female confidential secretary ?" and afterwards, " that you may never 
want the benejit of clergy in every emergency, is the wish of Yours, &c." — C. 

* Trial of John Leary for high treason, Dec, 2Sth, 1795. This fact came out on the 
cross examination of Lawler, an informer, and the witness against the prisoner in this 
case. Lawler was one of the party that was to have seized Coclvayne : he did not actually 
admit that he was to have been assassinated; but he allowed that the objection to such 
a measure was, " that if Cockayne were put to death, and the court should know it, the 
informations he had given could be read in evidence against Jackson." From the cha- 
racter of Lawler, however, it was generally suspected that assassination was inten- 
ded.— C. 



Jackson's tsial. 181 

trial was delayed, by successive adjournments, till the same month 
m the following year. In the interval, he wrote and published a 
refutation of Paine's Age of Reason, probably in the hope that it 
might be accepted as an atonement.* 

[The trial took place on April 23, 11 95. The judges were Lord 
Clonmel, Mr. Justice Downes, Mr. Justice Chamberlain. The prin- 
cipal witness was Cockayne, the spy. Curran, who defended 
Jackson, principally relied on the fact that no conviction for high 
treason could take place in England v/ith two witnesses to the 
facts, whereas it was thus attempted, in Ireland, to convict on the 
evidence of one. The anomaly was not removed until 1854, when 
the law was made the same in both countries. 

The trial lasted until four in the morning, when Jackson was 



* Examples of honourable conduct, no matter by whom displayed, are heard with plea- 
sure by every friend to human nature. Of such, a very rare instance was given by this 
gentleman during his imprisonment. For the whole of that period he was treated with 
every possible indulgence, a fact which is so creditable to the Irish Government, that it 
would be unjust to suppress it. Among the other acts of lenity extended to him, was a 
permission to enjoy the society of his friends. A short time before his trial, one of 
these remained with him to a very late hour of the night : when he was about to depart, 
Mr. Jackson accompanied him as far as the place where the gaoler usually waited on such 
occasions, until all his prisoner's visitors should have retired. They found the gaoler in a 
profound sleep, and the kej's of the prison lying beside him. " Poor fellow !" said Mr. 
Jackson, taking up the keys, " let us not disturb him ; I have already been too trouble- 
some to him in tliis way." He accordingly proceeded with his friend to the outer door of 
the prison, which he opened. Here the facility of escaping naturally struck him — he 
became deeply agitated ; but after a moment's pause, " / could do it^'' said he, " but 
what would be the consequence to you, and to the poor fellow within, who has been so 
kind to me ? No ! let me rather meet my fate." He said no more, but locking the prison 
door again, returned to his apartment. It should be added that the gentleman, out of 
consideration for whom such an opportunity was sacrificed, gave a proof upon this occasion 
that he deserved it. He was fully aware of the legal consequences of aiding in the escape 
of a prisoner committed under a charge of high treason, and felt that in the present 
instance, it would have been utterly impossible for him to disprove the circumstantial 
evidence that would have appeared against him ; yet he never uttered a syllable to 
dissuade his unfortunate friend. He, however, considered the temptation to be so irresist- 
able that, expecting to find the prisoner, upon further reflection, availing himself of it, he 
remained all night outside the prison door, with the intention, if Mr. Jackson should 
escape, of instantly flying from Ireland.— C. 



182 LIFE OF CTJREAN. 

convicted. He was brought np for judgment on the 30th April, 
1795.^^] 

It is at this stage of the proceedings that the case of Jackson 
becomes terribly peculiar. Never, perhaps, did a British court of 
justice exhibit a spectacle of such appalling interest as was wit- 
nessed by the King's Bench of Ireland, upon the day that this un- 
fortunate gentleman was summoned to hear his fate pronounced. 
He had a day or two before made some allusions to the subject of 
suicide. In a conversation with his counsel in the prison, he had 
observed to them that his food was always cut in pieces before it 
was brought to him, the gaoler not venturing to trust him with a 
knife or fork. This precaution he ridiculed, and observed, " that 
the man who feared not death, could never want the means of 
dying, and that as long as his head was within reach of the prison- 
wall, he could prevent his body's being suspended to scare the 
community." At the moment, they regarded this as a mere casual 
ebullition, and did not give it much attention. 

On the morning of the 30th of April, as one of these gentlemen 
was proceeding to Court, he met in the streets a person warmly 
attached to the Government of the day ; the circumstance is tri- 
vial, but it marks the party spirit that prevailed, and the manner 
in which it was sometimes expressed ; " I have (said he) just seen 
your client, Jackson, pass by on his way to the King's Bench to 
receive sentence of death. I always said he was a coward, and I 
find I was not mistaken ; his fears have made him sick — as the 
coach drove by, I observed him with his head out of the window, 
vomiting violently." The other hurried on to the Court, where he 
found his client supporting himself against the dock ; his frame 
was in a state of violent perturbation, but his mind was still col- 

* The report of Mr. Curran's defence of Jackson ■will be found in the lately published 
volume of Howell's State Trials. It was (as he observed himself) " a narrow case," and 
afforded few materials for the display of eloquence. The principal points which he urged 
were the necessity of two witnesses (as in England) and the impeached character of the 
single witness, Cockayne.— 0. 



SUICIDE OF A CONVICT. 183 

lected. He beckoned to his counsel to approach him, and making 
an effort to squeeze him with his damp and nerveless hand, uttered 
in a whisper, and with a smile of mournful triumph, the dying 
words of Pierre : 

" We have deceived the senate."* 

The prisoner's counsel having detected what they conceived to 
be a legal informality in the proceedings, intended to make a mo- 
tion in arrest of his judgment ; but it would have been irregular 
to do so until the counsel for the Crown, who had not yet appeared, 
should first pray the judgment of the court upon him. During 
the interval, the violence of the prisoner's indisposition momenta- 
rily increased, and the Chief Justice, Lord Clonmel, was speaking 
of remanding him, when the Attorney General came in, and called 
upon the court to pronounce judgment upon him. Accordingly, 
" the Reverend William Jackson was set forward," and presented 
a spectacle equally shocking and affecting. His body was in a 
state of profuse perspiration ; when his hat was removed, a dense 
steam was seen to ascend from his head and temples ; minute and 
irregular movements of convulsions were passing to and fro upon 
his countenance ; his eyes were nearly closed, and when at inter- 
vals they opened, discovered by the glare of death upon them, that 
the hour of dissolution was at hand. When called on to stand up 
before the Court, he collected the remnant of his force to hold 
himself erect ; but the attempt was tottering and imperfect ; he 
stood rocking from side to side, wdth his arms in the attitude of 
firmness, crossed over his breast, and his countenance strained by 
a last proud effort into an expression of elaborate composure. In 
this condition he faced all the anger of the offended law, and the 
more confounding gazes of the assembled crowd. The Clerk of 
the Crown now ordered him to hold up his right hand ; the dy- 
ing man disentangled it from the other, and held it up, but it 
instantly dropped again ! Such was his state, when in the solemn 
simplicity of the language of the law, he was asked, " What he 

* Otway'B Venice Preserved. 



184 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

had now to say wliy judgment of death and execution thereon, 
should not be awarded against him according to law?" Upon 
this Mr. Curran rose, and addressed some arguments to the Court 
in arrest of judgment. A legal discussion of considerable length 
ensued. The condition of Mr. Jackson was all this while becom- 
ing worse. Mr. Curran proposed that he should be remanded, as 
he was in a state of body that rendered any communication be- 
tween him and his counsel impracticable. Lord Clonmel thought 
it lenity to the prisoner to dis2:)ose of the question as speedily as 
possible. The windows of the Court were thrown open to relieve 
him, and the discussion was renewed ; but the fatal group of death 
tokens were now collecting fast around him ; he was evidently in 
the final agony. At length, while Mr. Ponsonby, who followed 
Mr. Curran, was urging further reasons for arresting the judgment, 
their client sunh in the docJc.^ 

The conclusion of the scene is given as follows in the rejDorted 
trial. 

Lord Clonmel — " If the prisoner is in a state of insensibility, it 
is impossible that I can pronounce the judgment of the Court 
upon him." 

Mr. Thomas Kinsley, who was in the jury box, said he would 
go down to him ; he accordingly went into the dock, and in a 
short time informed the Court that the prisoner was certainly dying. 

By order of the court, Mr. Kinsley was sworn. 

* As soon as the cause of Mr. Jackson's death was ascertained, a report prevailed that 
his counsel had been previously in the secret, and that their motion in arrest of judgment 
was made for the sole purpose of giving their client time to expire before sentence could 
be passed upon him : but for the assertion of this fact, which, if ti-ue, would have placed 
them in as strange and awful a situation as can well be imagined, there was no founda- 
tion. So little prepared were they for such an event, that neither of his assigned counsel 
(Messrs. Curran and Ponsonby) appeared in court until a considerable time after the pri- 
soner had been brought up. It was Mr. M'Nally, who had been one of his assistant coun- 
sel upon the trial, and who found him in the condition above described, that first became 
acquainted with the fact of his having taken poison ; and he, at the request of the unfor- 
tunate prisoner, rose as amicus curiae, for the purpose of occupying the court till thtf 
others should arrive and make their intended motion. It was probably from this circum 
stance that the report originated. — C, 



A tragp:dy in court. 185 

Lord Clonmel — " Are yoii in any profession ?" 

Mr. Kinsley — " I am an apothecary." 

Lord Clonmel — " Can you speak \nth certainty of tlie state of 
the prisoner ?" 

Mr. Kinsley — " I can ; I tliink him verging to eternity." 

Lord Clonmel — "Do you tliink him capable of hearing his 
judgment ?" 

Mr. Kinsley — " I do not think he can." 

Lord Clonmel — " Then he must be taken away ; take care that 
in sending him away no mischief be done. Let him be 
remanded until further orders ; and I believe it as much for his 
advantage as for all yours to adjourn." 

The Sheriff informed the Court that the prisoner was dead. 

Lord Clonmel — " Let an inquisition, and a respectable one, be 
held on the body. You should carefully inquire by what means 
he died." 

The Court then adjourned, and the body of the deceased 
remained in the dock, unmoved from the position in which he 
had expired, until the following day, when an inquest was held. 
A large quantity of metallic poison was found in his stomach. 
The preceding day, a little before he was brought up to Court, 
the gaoler having visited his room, found him with his wife, much 
agitated, and vomiting violently ; he had just taken, he said, 
some tea, Avhich disagreed with him ; so that there remained no 
doubt that the unfortunate prisoner, to save himself and his 
family the shame of an ignominious execution, had anticipated 
the punishment of the laws by taking poison. 

The following sentences, in his own handwriting, were found 
in his pocket. 

" Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me, for I am deso- 
late and afflicted." 

" The troubles of my heart are enlarged ; oh, bring thou 
me out of my distresses." • 

" Look upon my affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins." 



186 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

" Oil ! keep my soul and deliver me. Let me not be ashamed, 
for I put my trust in tliee." 

Independent of this awful scene, the trial of Jackson was 
a memorable event. It was the first trial for high treason which 
had occurred in that Court for upwards of a century. As a mat- 
ter of legal and of constitutional interest, it established a pre- 
cedent of the most vital (Englishmen would say, of the most 
fatal) importance to a community having any pretension to 
freedom. Against the authority of Coke, and the reasoning 
of Blackstone, and against the positive reprobation of the princi- 
ple by the English legislature, it was solemnly decided in Jack- 
son's case, that in Ireland one witness was sufficient to convict a 
prisoner upon a charge of high treason — " that the breath which 
cannot even taint the character of a man in England, shall 
in Ireland blow him from the earth."* This decision has 
ever since been recognised and acted upon, to the admiration of 
that class of politicians (and they have abounded in Ireland) who 
contend that in every malady of the State, blood should be plen- 
tifully drawn ; and to the honest indignation of men of equal 
capacity and integrity, who consider that, without reason or 
necessity, it establishes an odious distinction, involving in it 
a disdain of what Englishmen boast as a precious privilege, 
alluring accusations upon the subject, and conferring security and 
omnipotence upon the informer. 

It is a little singular to observe, in the State Trials that fol- 
lowed, the effects of such a law, and to what a class of witnesses 
it familiarized the Irish Courts of Justice. From the event 
it would appear, that there was as much prophecy, as of constitu- 
tional zeal, in Mr. Curran's efforts to prevent its establish- 
ment, and afterwards to produce its repeal.f To say nothing but 

* Mr. Curran's defence of Jackson. — C. 

t Two days after Jackson's conviction, Mr. Cui-ran moved in Uie House of Commons 
for leave to bring in a bill for amending the law of Ireland in cases of high treason, and 
assmiilating it with that of England. 

The Attorney-General earnestly intreated of the mover to postpone the introduction 



TREASON WITNESSES. 187 

of a few of tliose cases in which he acted as counsel, the 
facts of Jackson, Weldon, M'Cann, Byrne, Bond, the Sheareses, 
Finney, rested ahiiost entirely upon the credibility of a sin- 
gle witness. All of these, except the last, were convicted ; and 
that they were involved in the projects, for which they were tried 
and suffered, is now a matter of historical notoriety. Few, 
it is hoped, will maintain the dangerous principle, that the subject 
should have the inducement of impunity to conspire against 



of this bill, lest it might throw a character of illegality upon Jackson's conviction. He 
believed that the present difiference in the law of the two countries (as to the number of 
witnesses required) did not arise from casual omission, but from serious deliberation ; it 
was (he thought) rather necessary to strengthen the Crown against the popular crime, 
than to strengthen the criminal against the Crown. 

Mr. Curran differed, and considered the rock on which criminal law generally split was 
its excessive severity. For the reason first assigned, however, he agreed to postpone the 
bill ; but foreseeing its inevitable failure, he never brought it forward again. 

In England, by different statutes regulating trials for high treason, two witnesses are 
required. (Algernon Sydney's attainder, as is well known, was reversed, because, among 
other reasons, there had been but one legal witness to any act of treason.) When those 
statutes were enacted in Ireland, the clauses requiring two witnesses were omitted. 
Upon Jackson's trial, therefore, the question was, what had been the old common law of 
England. Lord Coke lays it down, that by that law one witness was never suflicieut. 
Judge Foster, differing from him, gives it as his, and as the general opinion, that two 
were not required by the common law. Of the same opinion is Sergeant Hawkins. 
These (according to the report of Jackson's trial) were the only authorities referred to 
by Lord Clonmel in deciding the point. For the contrariety of opinions upon this sub- 
ject, see the proceedings in Sir J. Fenwick's case, State Ti-ials. 

It cannot be too much lamented, that in such an important particular the law of the 
two countries should thus differ. The principle cannot be right in both. Inferior regu- 
lations may vary, but the laws that provide for the safety of the State and the security 
of the subject are not local ordinances ; they are general laws, and should be founded 
on the principles which are to be derived from an experience of the operation of human 
passions, and of the value of human testimony. In Ireland, it has been said, that from 
the state of society, the Crown demanded additional security ; but the same argument 
applies as strongly the other way ; for if any community is in such a state of demorali- 
zation that its members are found violating their oaths, and indulging their passions by 
frequent acts of treason^ is it not equally clear that they will not refrain from doing the 
same by frequent acts of perjured evidence ? Whoever will submit to the " penance" of 
reading the English or Irish State Trials, will soon perceive that treason and perjury are 
always cotemporary crimes, and that the dangers of the Crown and of the subject are 
at every period are reciprocal and commensurate. Certainly, as the laws at present 
stand, either the English subject enjoys too many privileges, or the Irish too few; but 
that the former is not the case long experience has now incontestably established. — C. 



188 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

the State — such a doctrine would bring instant ruin upon any 
society ; but every friend to constitutional law will distin- 
guish between the evidence that precedes a conviction and 
that which follows ; he will remember that the forms of trial, and 
the legality of evidence, have not been established for the 
solitary purpose of punishing the guilty ; that their most precious 
use is for the security of innocence ; and that if, forejudging the 
real offender, we too hastily deprive him of a single privilege 
of defence, we establish a perilous rule that survives the occasion 
and extends beyond it, and of which those who never offended 
may hereafter be the victims. If the trials of the indivi- 
duals just named be considered with reference to this view, 
they will be found to contain matter of important reflection. We 
may not feel justified in lamenting their personal fate — in giving 
to their memories " the traitorous humanity and the rebel tear," 
yet vre cannot but be shocked at the characters of the persons by 
whose evidence they were carried off. These were all of them 
men of blighted reputation. It was not merely that they had 
been accomplices in the crimes which they came to denounce ; 
and that, finding the speculation dangerous and unprofitable, they 
endeavoured to retrieve their credit and circumstances, by 
setting up as " loyal apostates." Deeper far w^as, if not their 
legal ofience, their moral depravity. Dreadful were the con- 
fessions of guilt, of dishonour, and irreligion extorted from 
these wretches. If their direct examination produced a list of the 
prisoners' crimes, as regularly did their cross-examination elicit a 
darker catalogue of their own. In the progress of their 
career, from participation to discovery, all the tender chari- 
ties of life were abused — every sacred tie rent asunder. The 
agent, by the semblance of fidelity, ^extracted the secret of 
his client and his friend, and betrayed him !* The spy resorted 
to the habitation of his \'ictim, and, while sharing his hospitality, 

* Jackson's Trial. 



CONDITION OF THE COURTS. 189 

and fondling his children, was meditating his ruin/" Here 
was to be seen the wild Atheist, who had gloried in his 
incredulity, enjoying a lucid interval of faith, to stamp a 
legal value on his oathf — there the dishonest dealer, the acknow- 
ledged perjurer, the future murderer.]; 

It has been often a matter of surprise that juries had not tho 
firmness to spurn altogether the testimony of such delin- 
quents. In England, upon a recent occasion,§ a jury did so ; but 
in Ireland there raged, at this time, an epidemic panic. In 
the delirious fever of the moment, even though the juror 
might not have thirsted for the blood of the accused, he 
yet trembled for his own — affrighted by actual danger, or by 
the phantoms of his disturbed imagination, he becam.e blind 
or indifferent to the horrors of the immediate scene. The 
question was often not whether the witness was a man he 
could believe, but whether his verdict dare assert the con- 
trary. Perhaps the more flagitious the witness, the more abso- 
lutely was he the tyrant of the juror's conscience. Any move- 
ments of humanity or indigTiation in the breast of the latter must 
have instantly been quelled by the recollection, that to yield 



* Jackson's Trial and the Trial of the Sheareses. A few days before Cockayne had 
openly announced himself as an informer, he was invited to accompany Jackson to dine 
with a friend of the latter. After dinner, as soon as the wine had sufficiently circulated, 
Jackson, according to a previous suggestion from Cockayne, began to sound the politi- 
cal dispositions of the company, and particularly addressed himself to a gentleman of 
rank who sat beside him, and who, there was subsequent reason to believe, was deeply 
involved in the politics of the time. During the conversation, Cockayne appeared 
to have fallen asleep ; but, in the midst of it, the master of the house was called out by 
his servant, who informed him, that he had observed something very singular in Mr. 
Jackson's friend—" he has his hand," said the servant, " over his face, and pretends to 
be asleep, but when I was in the room just now I could perceive the glistening of hiseyo 
through his fingers." The gentleman returned to his guests ; and whispering to him who 
was conversing with Jackson to be cautious of his language, probably prevented some 
avowal which might eventually have cost him his life. Upon such trivial accidents do 
the fates of men depend in agitated times ! — C. 

t Trial of the Sheareses.— C. 

t Finney's Trial ; and the other State Trials of 1T98.— 0. 

§ Trial of Watfion and others for high treason.— 0. 



190 LIFE OF CUSEAX. 

to them might be to point out himself as an object of suspicion, 
and as the next experiment for an adventurous and irritated 
informer. 

It is in the same circumstances that we are to look for an excuse 
(if excuse be necessary) for those impassioned appeals, for that 
tone of hig-h and solemn obtestation, by which Mr. Curran's pro- 
fessional efforts at this period are distinguished. In more tranquil 
times or in a more tranquil country, such enthusiasm may appear 
extravagant and unnatural ; but it should be remembered, that, 
from the nature of the cases, and the character of his audience, his 
address often became rather a religious exhortation than a mere 
forensic harangue."^ His situation was very different from that 
of the English advocate, who, presupposing in his hearers a respect 
for the great fundamental principles of law and of ethics, securely 
appeals to them, in the conviction, that, if his client deserves it, 
he shall have all their benefit. In Ireland, the client was not 
certain of all their benefit. In Ireland, during those distracted 
days, every furious passion was abroad. The Irish advocate knew 



* Of this, examples *ill occur, in the following pages. Upon inferior occasions we find 
him impressing the most obvious political truths, by a simplicity of illustration, which 
shows the description of men among whom he was thrown. When he wished to explain 
to a jury, "that their country could never be prosperous, or happy, without a general 
participation of happiness to all its people," he thus proceeds :— " A privileged order in a 
state may, in some sort, be compared to a solitary individual separated from the society, 
and unaided by the reciprocal converse, affections, or support of his fellow men. It is 
like a tree standing singly on a high hill, and exposed to the rude concussions of every 
varying blast, devoid of fruit or foliage. If you plant trees around it, to shade it from the 
inclemency of the blighting tempest, and secm-e to it its adequate supply of sun and 
moisture, it quickly assumes all the luxuriance of vegetation, and proudly rears its head 
aloft, fortified against the noxious gales which agitate and wither the unprotected bram- 
bles lying without the verge of the plantation. ' Upon this principle acted thedyingman, 
whose family had been disturbed by domestic contentions. Upon his death-bed he calls 
his children around him ; he orders a bundle of twigs to be brought ; he has them untied ; 
he gives to each of them a single twig; he orders them to be broken, and it is done with 
facility ; he next orders the twigs to be united in a bundle, and directs each of them to 
try his strength upon it. They shrink from the task as impossible. ' Thus, my children, 
(continued the old man) it is union alone that can render you secure against the attempts 
of your enemies, and preserve you in that state of happiness which I wish you to enjoy.' " 
—Speech in Defonce of Bird, Eamil and others, tried at Drogheda, 1794.-0. 



JUEY-PACKING. 191 

that the juries Avith whom he had to deal were often composed 
of men Avhose feelings of humanity and relig'ion were kept under 
by their political prejudices — that they had already foredoomed 
his client to the grave — that, bringing with them the accumulated 
animosities of past centuries, they came less to try the prisoner 
than to justify themselves, and make their verdict a vote of appro- 
bation upon the politics of their party.* To make an impression 
upon such men, he had to awaken their dormant sympathies by 
reiterated statements of the first principles of morals and religion : 
he addressed himself to their eternal fears, his object being fre- 
quently, not so much to direct their minds to the evidence or the 

* The following observations of Mr. Curran will give some idea of the juries 
of those days : he is addresing a jury impannelled to try the validity of a chal- 
lenge : — 

" This is no common period in the history of the world — they are no ordinary trans- 
actions that are now passing before us. All Europe is shaken to its centre ; we feel its 
force, and are likely to be involved in its consequences. There is no man who has sense 
enough to be conscious of his own existence, who can hold himself disengaged and uncon- 
cerned amidst the present scenes ; and, to hear a man say that he is unbiassed and unpre- 
judiced, is the surest proof that he is both. Prejudice is the cobweb that catches vulgar 
minds ; but the prejudices of the present day float in the upper regions — they entangle tho 
lofty heads — they are bowing them down— you see them as they flutter, and hear them as 

they buzz. Mr. has become a very public and a very active man ; he has his mind, I 

doubt not, stored with the most useful and extensive erudition — he is clothed with the sacred 
office of a minister of the Gospel — he is a magistrate of the county — he is employed as agent 
lo some large properties — he is reputably connected, and universally esteemed, and there- 
fore is a man of no small weight and consideration in this country. He has more than once 
positively sworn that he has applied to the high sherifif— that he struck off no names but 
those that wanted freeholds ; but to-day, he finds that freeholders were struck off by his 
own pen— he tells you, my lords, and gentlemen triers, with equal modesty and ingenuity, 
that he has made a mistake— he returns eightj'-one names to the sheriff — he receives 
blank summonses, fills what he deems convenient, &c. Gracious heaven ! what are the 
courts of justice? what is trial by jury ? what is the country brought to ? Were it told 
in the courts above — were it told in other countries — were it told in Westminster Hall, that 
such a man was permitted to return nearly one half of the grand panel of the county 
from one particular district, — a district under severe distress, — to which he is agent and 
on which, with the authority he possesses, he is able to bring great calamity ! He ascends 
the pulpit with the Gospel of benignity and peace — he endeavours to impress himself and 
others with its meek and holy spirit : — he descends — throws off the pm-ple — seizes the 
insurrection act in the one hand, and the whip in the other — flies by night and by day 
after his game ; and, with his heart panting, his breath exhausted, and his belly on the 
ground in the chase, he turns round, and tells you that his mind is unpr^udiced — that 
his breast is full of softness and humanity."— J?ow>rt. Aseize9, 1T05.— C. 



192 LIFE OF CURE AX. 

law, as to remind them of the Christian duties ; and even in those 
cases, where both law and fact were upon his side, and where, 
under other circumstances, he might have boldly demanded an 
acquittal, he was in reality labouring to extort a pardon. 

It was wdth the same view that he so often made the most im- 
passioned appeals, even to the Bench, when he saw that its j^oliti- 
cal feelings were hostile to the interests of his client. Thus, upon 
the trial of Hamilton Rowan, the principal witness for the Crown, 
having deposed that he had seen Mr. Rowan at a meeting of 
United Irishmen, consisting of one hundred and fifty persons, and 
his evidence upon this most material fact ha\dng been impeached, 
the Chief Justice (Lord Clonmel), in his charge to the jury, ob- 
served, " One hundred and fifty Volunteers, or United Irishmen, 
and not one comes forward! Many of them would have been 
proud to assist him (the traverser). Their silence speaks a thou- 
sand times more strongly than any cavilling upon this manh credit 
— the silence of such a nurnher is a volume of evidence in support 
of the prosecution^ * Upon a motion for a new trial, Mr. Cur- 

* This passage of Lord Clonmel's charge was omitted, and, no doubt, designedly, in the 
original edition of Hamilton Rowan's trial, published in Dublin. — C. 

Lord Clonmel, for many years Chief Justice of the King's Bench in Ireland, was a man 
whose mind and form were very coarse. He had risen from a low origin to great wealth 
and high station, but never looked like a gentleman. His manners were coarse. His 
appearance was peculiar — his face was the color of the scarlet robe which he wore, a3 
Judge, and literally "flared up" (so rubicund was it) when he got into a passion, which 
was about once in every twenty minutes. He and Cm-ran did not agree. At the bar, 
when both were young, they had had several wordy contests, in which Curran succeeded. 
This was never forgotten by his opponent when a Judge. It is related that on one occa- 
sion the noble lord was so pressed both by the argument, the eloquence, and the wit of 
Mr. Curran, that he lost temper, and called on the sheriffs to be ready to take any one 
into arrest who would be found so contemptuously presuming to fly into the face of the 
court. Mr, Curran, perceiving the twittering of a swallow actively in pursuit of flies, in 
his turn called on the sheriffs to take that swallow into arrest, for it was guilty of con- 
tempt, as it had contemptuously presumed to^fii/ in the face of the court. The ridicule of 
this, and the peals of laughter which ensued, closed the scene. On some contested argu- 
ment in the Court of King's Bench, Lord Clonmel, who was said to have a stronger dash 
of the overbearing than of the brave, stood out against Mr. Curran with a brow-beating 
vehemence, and showed a determination to have things entirely in his own way. He 
made repeated but ineffectual efforts to reduce Mr. Curran, or (as the phrase is used) to 
put him down. He, however, withstood all the violence of those attempts, and the 



SNARL WITH A JUDGE. 193 

ran, in commenting upon those expressions, could not refrain from 
exclaiming, " I never before heard an intimation from any judge 
to a jury, that bad evidence, liable to any and every exception, 
ought to receive a sanction from the silence of the party. With 
anxiety for the honour and religion of the law, I demand it of 
you, must not the jury have understood that this silence was evi- 
dence to go to them ? Is the meaning contained in the expression 
' a volume of evidence' only an insinuation ? I do not know where 
any man could be safe — I do not know what any man could do to 
screen himself from prosecution — I know not how he could be 
secure, even Avhen he Avas at prayers before the throne of Heaven, 
that he was not passing that moment of his life, in which he was 
to be charged with the commission of some crime to be expiated 
to society, by the loss of his liberty or of his life — I do not know 
what shall become of the subject, if the jury are to be told that 
the silence of a man charged is ' a volume of evidence that he is 
guilty of the crime.' Where is it written? I know there is a 
place where vulgar phrensy cries out that the public instrument 
must be drenched in blood — where defence is gagged, and the de- 
voted wretch must perish. But even there the victim of such 
tyranny is not made to fill, by voluntary silence, the defects of his 
accusation ; for his tongue is tied, and therefore no advantage is 
taken of him by construction : it cannot be there said that his not 
speaking is 'a volume of evidence' to prove his guilt." After 
some farther observations, he thus concluded his arguments : 
" You are standing on a narrow isthmus, that divides the great 
ocean of duration — on the one side of the past, on the other of the 

encounter was upheld with all that passion could supply, or courage hope to extinguish. 
Mr. Ourran look^, and lighted up all the fire of his mighty eye, surveyed his adversary 
with the most intense and mdignant scowl, such as would have pierced through all 
impediments; while the red and inflamed countenance of the Judge, with the menace and 
attitude of an overwhelming passion, kindled into a burning blaze. With a firm, calm, 
and measured tone, Mr. Curran addressed him, and whilst he did so, he seemed armed 
with the bolt of heaven, ready to hurl destruction on his victim. After some prelude, he 
concluded his address in these words: "Does your lordship think I am tiiat silly dog to 
bay that moon — to bay that moon — which I am not able to extinguish ?" — M. 

9 



194 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

future — a ground tliat, while you yet hear me, is washed from 
beneath your feet. Let me remind you, my lords, while your de- 
termination is yet in your power — dum versatur adhitc intra pene- 
tralia Vestce — that on the ocean of the future you must set your 
judgment afloat ; and future ages will assume the same authority 
which you have assumed ; posterity will feel the same emotions 
which you have felt, when your little hearts have beaten, and 
your infant eyes have overflowed at reading the sad story of the 
sufterings of a Eussel or a Sydney." 

All this has been represented as very strange, and even absurd, 
by those who would not reflect upon the state of the times, and 
the necessity which it imposed upon the advocate of addressing 
the passions which he knew to be actuating his hearers, no matter 
to what order of the community thev mio-ht belonof. 



CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 195 



CHAPTER IX. 

Catholic Emancipatioa— Mr. Curran moves an address to the Throne for an inquii-y into 
the state of the poor — Other Parliamentary questions — Mr. Ponsonby's plan of Reform 
rejected — Secession of Mr. Curran and his friends — Orr's trial — Finnerty's trial — Fin- 
ney's Trial — The informer, James O'Brien. 

[On May 4, 1795, a sharp debate took place in the Irish Coni' 
mons, on the second reading of a Catholic Emancipation Bill, 
which had been introduced, during the preceding January, under 
the liberal auspices of Lord Fitzwilliam, the new and liberal 
Viceroy. But George III. was determined not to admit his 
Roman Catholic subjects to the enjoyment of civil rights, and the 
too liberal Viceroy was recalled. The Irish Commons, on the 
strength of the Emancipation Bill being a fact, had liberally voted 
large supplies for carrying on the war then raging between France 
and England: The money received, the Irish Government threw 
over the Catholics, and the second reading of the Emancipation 
Bill w^as lost — there being 155 votes against and 84 for it. Mr. 
Curran supported the measure, and defended the character and 
conduct of Lord Fitzwilliam.] 

In May, 1795, Mr. Curran moved an address to the throne 
upon the distresses of Ireland, the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and 
the misconduct of his Majesty's ministers in their government of 
Ireland. It was not expected, by the opposition, that this motion 
would be carried : their object in bringing it forward was merely 
to leave a record of their opinions upon the subjects contained in 
the address.'^ Mr. Curran prefaced his motion by a long speech, 

* This address, after a few prefatory clauses stating the attachment of the Commons to 
his Majesty's person, and the monarchical form of government, and their late extraordi- 
nary supplies for carrying on the present most eventful war, proceeds — 

That we were the more induced to this, from a zeal for his Majesty's service, and an 



196 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

in the course of wliich he emphatically warned the House of the 
dangers that impended over the public tranquillity ; but upon this, 
a,s upon many former occasions, his predictions were disregarded. 
" I know," said he, " that this is not a time when the passions of 
the public ought to be inflamed ; nor do I mean to inflame them 
[murmurs from the other side of the House). Yes, I speak not to 
inflame ; but I address you in order to allay the fever of the pub- 
lic mind. If I had power to warn you, I would exert that power 
in order to diminish the public ferment — in order to show the 



attachment to Great Britain ; but accompanied with an expectation that our extraordi- 
nary grants would be justified to our constituents by a reform, under a patriot viceroy, 
of the various and manifold abuses that had taken place in the administration of the 
Irish Government; a reformation which we conceived, in the present times, and under 
such an increase of debt and taxes, indispensable, and which we do, therefore, most 
humbly persist to implore and expect. 

That, after the supply was granted and the force voted, and whilst the chief governor, 
possessing the entire confidence of both Houses of Parliament, and the approbation of all 
the people, was reforming abuses, and putting the country in a state of defence, he was 
suddenly and prematurely recalled, and our unparalleled efforts for the support of his 
Majesty answered by the strongest marks of the resentment of his ministers. 

That, in consequence of such a proceeding, the business of Government was inter- 
rupted, the defence of the country suspended, the unanimity which had under the then 
Lord Lieutenant existed converted into just complaint and remonstrance, and the energy, 
confidence, and zeal of the nation, so loudly called for by his Majesty's ministers, were, 
by the conduct of those very ministers themselves, materially affected. 

That these, their late proceedings, aggravated their past system ; in complaining of 
which, we particularly refer to the notorious traffic of honours — to the removal of the 
troops contrary to the law, and in total disregard of the solemn compact with the nation 
and safety of the realm — to the criminal conduct of Government respecting the Irish 
army — to the disbursements of sums of money, without account or authority — to the 
improvident grant of reversions, at the expense of his Majesty's interest, sacrificed, for 
the emolument of his servants, to the conduct of his Majesty's ministers m both coun- 
tries, towards his Protestant and Catholic subjects of Ireland, alternately practising ori 
their passions, exciting their hopes, and procuring their disappointment. 

That, convinced by the benefits which we have received under his Majesty's reign that 
the grievances of which we complain are as unknown to his Majesty as abhorrent from 
]iis paternal and royal disposition. 

We, his Commons of Ireland, beg leave to lay ourselves at his feet, and, with all 
humility to his Majesty, to prefer, on our part, and on the part of our constituents, this 
our just and necessary remonstrance against the conduct of his ministers ; and to 
Implore his Majesty that he may be graciously pleased to lay his commands upon his 
minister to second the zeal of his Irish Parliament in his Majesty's services, by manifest- 
ing in future to the people of Ireland due regard and attention. 



ABUSES AND GKIEVANCES. 197 

people that they have more security in your warmth than they 
can have in their own heat — that the ardour of your honest zeal 
may be a salutary ventilator to the ferment of your country — in 
order that you may take the people out of their own hands, and 
bring them within your guidance. Trust me, at this momentous 
crisis, a firm and tempered sensibility of injury would be equally 
honourable to yourselves and beneficial to the nation : trust me, 
if^ at a time when every little stream is swollen into a torrent, we 
alone should be found to exhibit a smooth, and listless, and frozen 
surface, the folly of the people may be tempted to walk across us ; 
and, whether they should suppose they were only walking upon 
ice, or treading upon corruption, the rashness of the experiment 
might be fatal to us all." 

[He said that the abuses and grievances which afflicted Ireland 
were " the sale of the honours of the peerage ; the open and 
avowed sale, for money, of the peerage, to any man rich and 
shameless enough to be a purchaser." Such a course, he said, 
depraved the Commons, profaned the sanctity of the Lords, poi- 
soned the sources of legislation and the fountains of justice, and 
annihilated the very idea of public honour and public integrity — 
but all this had been done by the government of Lord Westmor- 
land. Next was the depriving Ireland of troops, when the enemy 
was at the gate, and the breach of the compact to maintain 12,000 
soldiers in Ireland, might have been the loss of the island. Then 
came the wasteful expenditure of public money. There was the 
abuse of patronage — every office of value, of which a reversion 
could be granted, having been so disposed of for years and years 
to come. There was the injustice of neglecting, refusing, delaying 
relief to the Roman Catholics. Lastly, there were the restraints 
upon Irish Commerce. 

This was a full budget. Curran moved the address, Grattan 
seconded, and Ponsonby supported it. The Government moved 
and carried the adjournment of the House, and thus the address 
was not even put to the vote.] 



198 LIFE OF CCKKxiX. 

In the beginning of tlie following year, Mr. Curran moved 
" that a committee should be appointed to inquire into the state 
of the lower orders of the people," to whose wretchedness he 
attributed the prevailing discontents ; but his motion was, as 
usual, " suffocated by the question of adjournment." He also dis- 
tinguished himself by his support of Mr. G rattan's amendments 
to the addresses in this year, by his exertions on the question of 
Catholic emancipation, and by his opposition to the suspension of 
the habeas corpus act. 

[In December, 1795, Mr. Curran appeared in the Court at 
Dublin, as counsel for James Vv^eldon, charged with high treason. 
His client had been one of the "Dublin Defenders," and was 
charged not only with associating with traitors unknown, to assist 
the French, the public enemies of the Crown, but with associating 
with the Defenders to subvert the Protestant religion, and wdth 
cori-upting one William Lawler to become a Defender. The 
chief evidence for the Crown was this Lawler, whose testimony 
Mr. Curran cut up into tatters, besides giving proof that he was 
not credible. Weld on Avas convicted and hanged ; though Leary, 
another prisoner, was acquitted, under precisely similar facts ! 

Some more particular notice of Mr. Curran's last year of Par- 
liamentary life appears required here. In February, 1796, in the 
debate on the Indemnity Bill, he supported Grattan's unsuccessful 
motion that Justice Chamberlain and Baron Smith, the judges 
who had gone circuit in the disturbed districts, should first be 
examined, to open the state of the country and the general con- 
duct of the magistrates. In the same month, he spoke in favour 
of free trade between England and Ireland, and strongly opposed 
the Insurrection Act, which gave magistrates the arbitrary power 
of transportation, describing it as " a bill for the rich and against 
the poor," constituting poverty a crime, and leaving it to the dis- 
cretion of wealth to apportion the punishment. 

In October, 1796, when the French -were preparing Hoche's 
expedition for the invasion of Ireland, and the Irish Government 



NATIONAL DEFENCE. 199 

recommended union as a means of strength, G rattan m-jved that 
unanimity could best be obtained by enacting such laws as would 
secure to all of the King's subjects " the blessings and privileges 
of the Constitution, without distinction of religion." Mr. Curran 
was among those who supported this liberal view. His speech on 
this occasion contained man}^ truths, -well put. " Believe me, Sir," 
he said, " an invader can look for nothing but certain destruction 
when he is opposed by the wishes and passions of the people. It 
is not garrisons, it is not generals, nor armies, upon which we can 
repose in safety. It is on the union and zeal of the general inha- 
bitants, removing provisions, discovering designs, marring the 
projects, and hanging on the retreats of an enemy, that baffles 
and defeats him more than any regular force can do." In all 
probability, this was suggested by the orator's recollection of the 
manner in Avhich, during the American War of Independence, the 
troops of Great Britain were discomfited. Mr. Curran was fond 
of historic studies, and had warmly sj^mpathised wdth the Ameri- 
cans in their arduous contest for national independence. 

Another passage is worthy of quotation, as illustrative of Mr. 
Curran's figurative style. Answering the remark that the Irish 
Catholics had got much, and ought to be content, he said : " Why 
have they got much ? is it from the Minister ? is it from the Par- 
liament which threw its petition over its bar ? No, they got it by 
the great revolution of human affairs, by the astonishing march 
of the human mind ; a march that has collected too much 
moment on its advance to be now stopped in its progress. Tho 
bark is still afloat, it is freighted with the hopes and liberties of 
men ; she is already under w^eigh — the rower may faint, or the 
wind may sleep, but rely upon it, she has already acquired an 
energy of advancement that will support her course, and bring her 
to her destination ; rely upon it, whether much or little remains, 
it is now vain to Avithhold it ; rely upon it, you may as well stamp 
your foot upon the earth, in order to prevent its revolution. You 
cannot stop it ! you will only remain a silly gnomon upon its sur- 



200 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

face to ineasiire the rapidity of rotation, until you are forced 
round and buried in the shade of that body, whose irresistible 
course you would endeavour to oppose." 

The Attorney-General moved that leave be given to bring in a 
Bill similar to what had been enacted when England was threat- 
ened with invasion, authorizing the Irish Executive to take up 
and detain all persons suspected of treasonable practices. Leave 
was given, the bill was forthwith presented, read a first and 
second time that night (Oct. 13, 1796), and ordered to pass into 
committee the next day. On the motion that it be committed, a 
small opposition party, headed by Mr. George Ponsonby, resisted 
the measure. ]\Ir. Curran, commenting on the haste with which it 
had progressed, said : "At tAvo o'clock in the morning, the House 
was moved for leave to bring in a Bill to suspend the Habeas 
Corpus Act ; at five minutes joast two in the morning, the bill was 
read a first time ; and, after grove and mature deliberation, the 
bill was ordered to be read, and was accordingly read a second 
time at ten minutes past two in the morning. Its principle was 
then fully considered and approved of; and at fifteen minutes 
after two in the morning, it was laid before a Committee of the 
whole House!" The division was 13V to 7, and the Habeas Cor- 
pus act was suspended accordingly. 

On October l7th, 1796, in a debate on Grattan's motion in 
favour of the admission to seats in Parliament (seconded by 
George Ponsonby, and strenuously opposed by the Government), 
Dr. Duigenan, a polemical and political intolerant of the first 
(mud-and-) water, used violent and off"ensive language against the 
Catholics, in whose communion he had participated in his youth. 
Mr. Curran replied to him, and said, " He has abused the Catho- 
lics, he has abused their ancestors, he has abused the merchants 
of Ireland, he has abused Mr. Burke, he has abused those who 
voted for the order of the day." Mr. Curran then described his 
manner and matter of speaking — " that confusion of history and 
divinity, and civil law and canon law — that rollicldng mixture of 



IIOCHE'S EXPEDITIOX. 201 

politics and theology, and antiquity, with which he has over- 
Yvhehned the debate ; for the havoc and carnage he has made of 
the population of the last age, and the fury with which he seemed 
determined to exterminate, and even to devour, the population of 
this ; and which urged him, after tearing and gnawing the cha- 
racters of the Catholics, to spend the last efforts of his rage, with 
the most unrelenting ferocity, in actually gnawing the names/'^ 
In truth, sir, I felt some surprise, and some regret, when I heard 
him describe the sceptre of lath, and the tiara of straw, and 
mimic his bedlamite Emperor and Pope with such refined and 
happy gesticulation, that he could be prevailed on to quit so con- 
genial a company." Alluding to the declaration that the Catho- 
lics must not have Emancipation, because they demanded it with 
insolence, Mr. Curran said, " Suppose that assertion, false as it is 
in fact, to be true, is it any argum.ent with a public assembly that 
any incivility of demand can cover the injustice of refusal ? 
How low must that assembly be fallen, which can suggest as an 
apology for the refusal of an incontestible right, the answer which 
a bankrupt buck might give to the demand of his tailor — he will 
not pay the bill, because ' the rascal had dared to threaten his 
honour.' " The motion in favour of Catholic Emancipation was 
lost by 143 to 19. 

On January 6, 1797, Mr. Curran strongly joined in the animad- 
versions of the (Opposition on the inactivity of the British navy, 
when invasion was anticipated, whereby Hoche's expedition was 
within an ace of success. When the French fleet were in Bantry 
Bay, not a British line-of-battle ship was on the whole course of 
the kingdom of Ireland. A few weeks later (February 24th 
1797), Curran supported an address for the increase of the domestic 
army of Ireland, especially the yeomanry corps. The Ministerial 



* Dr. Duigenan, Trho used excessive gesticulation, and sometimes lashed himself into 
such a rage as to foam at the mouth, had such a peculiar way of barking out the name of 
Mr. Keogh, one of the Catholic leaders, that Mr. Curran said it was a sort of pronuncia- 
tory defamation. — M. 

9* 



202 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

party resisted the proposition, which was based on the increasing 
power of France, the inability or inactivity of England for the 
defence of Ireland, and the danger of Ireland herself. Mr. Curran 
mentioned, as a fact, that when the French fleet arrived in 
Bantry, there were not, in that quarter of the country, including 
Cork (the second city of Ireland), one thousand men to meet the 
enemy ! 

In February, 1*797, Mr. Curran also spoke on Ponsonby's 
motion of censure on the Irish Ministry, and on Vandeleur's 
motion for an Absentee Tax. In March of the same year, he 
went rather freely, and very forcibly, into the motion of censure 
for disarming the inhabitants of Ulster, on the pretext that 
" daring and horrid outrages " had been perpetrated in that pro- 
vince. This, in eftect, was declaring the inhabitants generally to 
be guilty of high treason. The Government had obtained a great 
majority in the Commons, and the motion was defeated. In 
truth, by this time, they had so distributed places, pensions, peer- 
ages, and promises, that they could carry or defeat any and every 
motion in both Houses of Parliament.] 

His last parliamentary effort was in the debate on Mr. William 
Brabazon Ponsonby's plan of parliamentary reform,* which inclu- 
ded Catholic Emancipation, and was brought forward by the 
Opposition as a final experiment to save Ireland from the horrors 
of the impending rebellion. By the late report of the secret 
committee, it had appeared that extensive associations for trea- 
sonable objects existed throughout the country : the Administra- 
tion considered that force alone should be resorted to — the Oppo- 
sition were as decided that conciliation, and conciliation alone, 
would restore tranquillity. The ostensible objects of the con- 
spiracy were reform and Catholic Emancipation : the Administra- 
tration admitted that these were merely pretexts, and that revolu- 
tion was the real though covert design ; but they argued " that 
the House ought to make a stand, and say that rebellion must be 

♦May 15th, 1797.— C. 



REFORM. 203 

put down^ before the grievances that were made its pretext should 
be even discussed." To this it was answered by Mr. Curran, " if 
Reform be only a pretence, and separation be the real objects of 
the leaders of the conspiracy, confound the leaders by destroying 
the pretext, and take the followers to yourselves. You say they are 
one hundred thousand ; I firmly beHeve they are three times the num- 
ber ; so much the better for you. If these seducers can attach so 
many followers to rebellion, by the hope of reform through blood, 
how much more readily will you engage them, not by the promise, 
but the possession, and without blood." " Reform (he continued) 
is a necessary change of mildness for coercion : the latter has 
been tried, and what is its success ? The Convention Bill was 
passed to punish the meetings at Dungannon and those of the 
Catholics : the Government considered the Catholic concessions 
as defeats that called for vengeance — and cruell}' have they 
avenged them ; but did that act, or those which followed, put 
down those meetings ? the contrary was the fact ; it most foolishly 
concealed them. "When popular discontents are abroad, a wise 
Government should put them in an hive of glass ; you hid them. 
The associations at first were small — the earth seemed to drink it 
as a rivulet ; but it only disappeared for a season : a thousand 
streams, through the secret windings of the earth, found their 
way to one source, and swelled its waters ; until at last, too mighty 
to be contained, it burst out a great river, fertilizing by its exun- 
dations, or terrifying by its cataracts. This was the effect of your 
penal code — it swelled sedition into rebellion. What else could 
be hoped from a system of terrorism ? Fear is the most transient 
of all the passions — it is the warning that nature gives for self- 
preservation ; but when safety is unattainable, the warning must 
be useless, and nature does not therefore give it. The Adminis- 
tration mistook the quality of penal laws : they were sent out to 
abolish conventicles ; but they did not pass the threshold, they stood 
sentinels at the gates. You thought that penal laws, like great 
dogs, would wag their tails to their masters, and bark only at 



204 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

their enemies : you were mistaken ; they turn and devour those they 
were meant to protect, and were harmless where they were intended 
to destroy. Gentlemen, I see, laugh — I see they affect to be still 
very ignorant of the nature of fear : this cannot last ; neither, 
while it does, can it be concealed : the feeble glimmering of a 
forced smile is a light that makes the cheek look paler. Trust me, 
the times are too humanized for such systems of government — 
humanity will not execute them ; but humanity will abhor them, 
and those who wished to rule by such means. We hoped much, 
and, I doubt not, meant well by those laws ; but they have miser- 
ably failed us : it is time to try milder methods. You have tried 
to force the people : but the rage of your penal laws was a storm 
that only drove them in groups to shelter. Before it is too late, 
therefore, try the better force of reason, and conciliate them by 
justice and humanity. Neither let us talk of innovation — the 
progress of nature is no innovation — the increase of people, the 
growth of the mind, is no innovation, unless the growth of our mind 
lag behind. If we think otherwise, and consider it an innovation 
to depart from the folly of our infancy, we should come here in 
our swaddling clothes ; we should not innovate upon the dress 
more than the understanding of the cradle. 

" As to the system of peace now proposed, you must take it on 
its principles; they are simply two — the abolition of religious 
disabilities, and the representation of the people. I am confident 
the effects would be every thing to be wished ; the present alarm- 
ing discontent will vanish, the good will be separated from the 
ill-intentioned ; the friends of mixed government in Ireland are 
many — every sensible man must see that it gives all the enjoy- 
ment of rational liberty, if the people have their due place in the 
state. This system Avould make us invincible against a foreign 
or domestic enemy; it would make the empire strong at this 
important crisis ; it would restore to us liberty, industry, and 
peace, which I am satisfied can never by any other means be 
restored" 



SENATORS IN A PET. 205 

The counsels of peace and conciliation v/hich Mr. Curran and 
his friends now proposed to the Parliament were the last which 
they had to oiier ; and finding that they were to be rejected, they 
resolved to take no farther part in deliberations where their inter- 
ference was so unavailing. " I agree (said Mr. Curran, in conclu- 
sion) that unanimity at this time is indispensable ; the house seems 
pretty unanimous for force ; I am sorry for it, for I bode the worst 
from it : I shall retire from a scene where I can do no good, and 
where I certainly should disturb that unanimity ; I cannot, how- 
ever, go without a parting entreaty, that men would reflect upon 
the awful responsibility in which they stand to their country and 
their conscience, before they set an example to the people of aban- 
doning the constitution and the law, and resorting to the terrible 
expedient of force." 

Mr. G rattan, Avho followed Mr. Curran, concluded his speech by 
announcing the same intention : — " Your system is perilous indeed. 
I speak without asperity ; I speak without resentment ; I speak, 
perhaps, my delusion, but it is my heartfelt conviction ; I speak 
my apprehension for the immediate state of our liberty, and for 
the ultimate state of the empire ; I see, or imagine I see, in this 
system, every thing which is dangerous to both ; I hope I am 
mistaken — at least, I hope I exaggerate ; possibly I may : if so, 1 
shall acknowledge my error with more satisfaction than is usual 
in the acknowledgment of error. I cannot, however, banish from 
my memory the lesson of the American war, and yet at that time 
the English Government was at the head of Europe, and was 
possessed of resources comparatively unbroken. If that lesson 
has no effect on ministers, surely I can suggest nothing that will. 
We have offered you our measure — you will reject it : we depre- 
cate yours — you will persevere ; having no hopes left to persuade 
or to dissuade, and having discharged our duty, we shall trouble 
yojj no more, and after this day shall not attend the House of 
Commonsr 

[The Opposition ceased to attend, and after a few more sittings 



206 . LIFE OF CUFwRAN. 

Parliament was adjourned on July 3, 1*797. In England, about 
the same time, Charles James Fox, leader of " His Majesty's Oppo- 
sition," finding his party invariably in a minority, declared his 
intention to forbear prosecuting an useless attendance in Parlia- 
ment. In 1800, however, Fox resumed his seat, and. used his 
most strenuous opposition as a friend of Ireland, to the Union. 
In 1799, Mr. Grattan returned to the Irish Parliament for a short 
time, to oppose the Union. Mr. Curran's senatorial life closed 
with his secession in 1797.] 

A few weeks after the secession of the Opposition, Mr. Grattan 
addressed a letter to the citizens of Dublin upon the part of him- 
self and the other members of the minority, to explain'their mo- 
tives in taking that step. This letter, besides being a splendid 
monument of the writer's genius, is an important historical docu- 
ment, and when confronted with the reports of secret committees 
and similar official statements, will show what an imperfect idea 
they convey of the real condition of the times. 

TRIAL OF MR. PETER FINNERTY. 

Mr. Curran's next great professional exertion was in the defence 
of Mr. Finnerty, who was tried in December, 1797, for a libel on 
the Government and person of the Viceroy (Lord Camden). The 
subject of the libel was the trial and execution of a person named 
William Orr, which had taken place a little before. Orr, who had 
been committed on a charge of high treason, was arraigned on an 
indictment framed under the Insurrection Act, for administering 
unlawful oaths, and convicted. A motion in arrest of judgment 
was made, in the argument upon which Mr. Curran, who was his 
leading counsel, is said to have displayed as much legal ability 
and aftecting eloquence as upon any occasion of his life. This 
argument is so imperfectly reported as to be unworthy of insertion. 
It contains, however, one striking example of that peculiar idiom 



PETER FINNERTy's CASE. . 207 

in which he discussed the most technical questions ; in contending 
that the act under which his cHent was tried had expired, he 
observes : " The mind of the judge is the repository of the Law that 
does exist, not of the law that did exist ; nor does the mercy and 
justice of our law recognize so disgraceful an office as that of a 
judge becoming a sort of administrator to a dead statute, and col- 
lecting the debts of blood that were due to it in its lifetime^ 

Another of his arguments for arresting the judgment was, " that 
the state had no right to wage a piratical war against the subject 
under false colours : " — that Orr's oifence (supposing the informer 
who gave evidence against him to have sworn truly) amounted to 
high treason, and that he should therefore have been indicted 
under the constitutional statute relating to that crime, from which 
the accused derive so many privileges of defence. It may be 
necessary to inform some readers, that when acts of high treason 
are made merely /(?/o?2y by a particular statute, the persons under 
trial lose, among other advantages, the benefit of their counsel's 
address to the jury, to which, had they been indicted for high 
treason, they would have been entitled.^' Upon such occasions, 
when Mr. Curran, in addressing the Court upon questions of law, 
happened to let fall any observations upon the general merits of 
the case, he had to sustain the reproach of " attempting to insinu- 
ate vl speech to the jury." 

But all his efibrts were unavailing ; his legal objections were 
overruled by the Bench ; and in answer to what he had addressed 
to the feelings of the Court, the presiding judge, Lord Yelverton, 
from whose mind classical associations were never absent, adverted 
to a passage in the history of the Roman commonwealth, where, 
after the expulsion of the Tarquins, it was attempted by the Patri- 
cians to restore royalty ; and the argument made use of was, " that 
a government by laws was stern and cruel, inasmuch as laws had 
neither hearts to feel, nor ears to hear ; whereas government by 
kings was merciful, inasmuch as the sources of humanity and 

* The law and practice have been altered since this was written. — M. 



208 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

tenderness were open to entreaty."* " For my part," added his 
Lordship, "I am acting under a government by hxws, and am 
bound to speak the voice of the law, which has neither feehng nor 
passions." 

But this excellent and feeling judge soon showed how little of 
leo-al insensibility belonged to his own nature. When he came to 
pronounce sentence of death upon the prisoner, he was so affected 
as to be scarcely audible, and the fatal words were no sooner con- 
cluded than he burst into tears, and, sinking his head between his 
hands, continued for many minutes in that attitude of honourable 
emotion. 

The prisoner was recommended to the jury for mercy, but, after 
receiving no less than three respites, was finally executed.f He 
died protesting his innocence ; and though such a declaration be 
very doubtful evidence of the fact (for who, about to suffer for a 
political crime, would not prefer to be remembered as a martyr ?), 
still there were, in the case of Orr, some corroborating circum- 
stances which render it a matter of surprise and regret that they 
should have been disregarded. His previous life and character 
had been irreproachable : subsequent to his trial, it appeared that 
the informer, upon whose evidence he had been convicted, had, 
according to his own confession, perjured himself on a former 

* Regem hominem esse, a quo impetres ubi jus, ubi injuria opus sit — esse gratise locum, 
esse beneflcio, et irasci et ignoscere posse — inter amicum atque inimicum discrimen 
nosse. Leges rem surdam, inexorabilem esse, salubriorem melioi-emque inopi, quam 
potenti — nihil laxamenti nee veniae habere, si modum excesseris. — Tit. Liv. lit. 2. — Lord 
Yelverton was considered as one of the most accomplished classical scholars of his lime. 
An unfinished translation of Livy (his favourite historian) remains among his papers.— C. 

[A lawyer pleading before Lord Avonmore, having to oppose some principles urged 
against him on the authority of Judge Blackstone, treated the works of that great com- 
mentator in terms of disrespect; at which Lord Avonmore was so provoked that he 
instantly burst forth into the following beautiful compliment to that eminent writer: " He 
first gave to the law the air of science ; he found it a skeleton, and clothed it with flesh, 
colour, and complexion; he embraced the cold statue, and by his touch it grew into life, 
?ense, and beauty. His great works survive the vagaries which pass through the crude 
minds of each giddy innovator, and which every packet imports in the form of a blue 
paper report."— M.] 

t On October 14, 1T97.— M. 



orr's trial. 209 

occasion, and had been, in other particulars, a person of infamous 
conduct and reputation ; but above all, the circumstances under 
which the verdict was found against Orr pointed him out, if not 
as an object constitutionally entitled to mercy, at least as one to 
whom it would have been an act of salutary mildness to have 
extended it. The jury had continued from seven o'clock in the 
evening till six on the following morning considering their ver- 
dict ; in the interval, spirituous liquor had been introduced into 
the jury-room, and intimidation used to such as hesitated to con- 
cur with the majority. To these latter facts two of the jury made 
a solemn affidavit in open court, before the judge who tried the 
cause. 

Upon these proceedings, a very severe letter of remonstrance to 
the Viceroy appeared in the "Press" newspaper, of which Mr. 
Finnerty was the publisher ; and the letter being deemed a libel, 
the publisher was brought to immediate trial. 

Mr. Curran's address to the jury in this case must be con- 
sidered, if not the finest, at least the most surprising specimen of 
his oratorical powers. He had had no time for preparation ; it 
was not till a few minutes before the cause commenced that his 
brief was handed to him. During the progress of the trial he 
had occasion to speak at unusual length to questions of law that 
arose upon the evidence ; so that his speech to the jury could 
necessarily be no other than a sudden extemporaneous exertion : 
and it was, perhaps, a secret and not unjustifiable feeling of piide 
at having so acquitted himself upon such an emergency that 
inclined his own mind to prefer this to any of his other efforts. 

The following is his description of the scenes which attended 
and followed the trial of William Orr : 

" Let me beg of you for a moment to suppose that any one of 
you had been the writer of this strong and severe animadversion 
upon the Lord Lieutenant, and that you had been the witness of 
that lamentable and never-to-be-forgotten catastrophe ; let me 



210 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

suppose that you had known the charge upon which j\Ir. Orr was 
apprehended — the charge of objuring that bigotry which had torn 
and disgraced his country, of pledging himself to restore the peo- 
ple to their place in the Constitution, and of binding himself 
never to be the betrayer of his fellow-laborers in that enterprise ; 
that you had seen him upon that charge torn from his industry 
and confined in a gaol ; that, through the slow and lingering pro- 
gress of twelve tedious months, you had seen him confined in a 
dungeon, shut out from the common use of air and of his own 
limbs ; that, day after day, you had marked the unhappy captive, 
cheered by no sound but the cries of his fjmiily or the clanking 
of his chains ; that you had seen him at last brought to his trial ; 
that you had seen the vile and perjured informer deposing against 
his life ; that you had seen the drunken, and worn out, and terri- 
fied jury give in a verdict of death ; that you had seen the same 
jury, when their returning sobriety had brought back their 
reason, prostrate themselves before the humanity of the Bench, 
and pray that the mercy of the ('rown might save their characters 
from the reproach of an involuntary crime, their consciences from 
the torture of eternal self-condemnation, and their souls from the 
indelible stain of innocent blood. Let me suppose that you had 
seen the respite given, and the contrite and honest recommenda- 
tion transmitted to that seat where mercy v/as presumed to dwell : 
that new and before unheard-of crimes are discovered against the 
informer; that the royal mercy seems to relent; that a new 
respite is sent to the prisoner ; that time is taken to see ' whether 
mercy could be extended or not ;' that after that period of linger- 
ing deliberation had passed, a third respite is transmitted ; that 
the unhappy captive himself feels the cheering hope of being- 
restored to a family that he had adored, to a character that he 
had never stained, and to a country that he had ever loved ; that 
you had seen his wife and his children upon their knees, giving 
those tears to gratitude which their locked and frozen hearts had 



DEFENCE OF FINNERTY. 211 

refused to anguish and despair, and imploring the blessings of 
eternal Providence upon his head who had graciously spared the 
father and restored him to his children : 

•Alas! 
Nor wife, nor children, no more shall he behold, 
Nor friends, nor sacred home !' 

" Often did the weary dove return to the window of his little 
ark ; but the olive leaf was to him no sign that the waters had 
subsided. No seraph Mercy unbars his dungeon, and leads him 
forth to light and life ; but the minister of Death hurries him to 
the scene of suffering and of shame : where, unmoved by the 
hostile array of artillery and armed men collected together to 
secure or to insult, or to disturb him, he dies with a solemn 
declaration of his innocence, and utters his last breath in a prayer 
for the liberty of his country. 

"Let me now ask you, if any of you had addressed the public 
ear upon so foul and monstrous a subject, in what language 
would you have conveyed the feelings of horror and indignation ? 
Would you have stooped to the meanness of qualified complaint ? 
Would you have checked your feelings to search for courtly and 
gaudy language ? -Would you have been mean enough — but I 
entreat your pardon : I have already told you I do not think 
meanly of you. Had I thought so meanly of you, I could not 
suff"er my mind to commune with you as it has done: had I 
thought you that base and servile instrument, attuned by hope 
and fear into discord and falsehood, from whose vulgar string no 
groan of suff'ering could vibrate, no voice of integrity or honour 
could speak, let me honestly tell you I should have scorned to 
fling my hand across it ; I should have left it to a fitter minstrel ; 
if I do not, therefore, grossly err in my opinion of you, you could 
invent no language upon such a subject as this, that must not lag 
behind the rapidity of your feelings, and that must not disgrace 
those feelings if it attempted to describe them." 



212 LIFE OF CUIiRAN. 

The distracted condition of Ireland at this unfortunate period, 
may be collected from the following description. To the general 
reader of Mr. Curran's speeches, the frequent recurrence of so 
painful a theme must diminish their attractions ; but it was too 
intimately connected with his subjects to be omitted ; and as has 
been previously remarked, the scenes which he daily witnessed 
had so sensible an influence upon the style of his addresses to 
juries, that some advertence to them here becomes indispensable. 

"The learned counsel has asserted that the paper which he 
prosecutes is only part of a system formed to misrepresent the 
state of Ireland -and the conduct of its government. Do you not 
therefore discover that his object is to procure a verdict to sanc- 
tion the parliaments of both countries in refusing an inquiry into 
your grievances ? Let me ask you then, are you prepared to say, 
upon your oath, that those measures of coercion which are daily 
practised, are absolutely necessary, and ought to be continued ? 
It is not upon Finnerty you are sitting in judgment ; but you are 
sitting in judgment upon the lives and liberties of the inhabitants 
of more than half of Ireland. You are to say that it is a foul pro- 
ceeding to condemn the Government of Ireland ; that is a foul 
act, founded in foul motives, and originating in falsehood and 
sedition ; that it is an attack upon a government under which the 
people are prosperous and happy; that justice is administered with 
mercy ; that the statements made in Great Britain are false — are 
the effusions of party or of discontent ; that all is mildness and 
tranquillity ; that there are no burnings — no transportations ; that 
you never travel by the light of conflagrations ; that the jails are 
not crow^ded month after month, from which prisoners are taken 
out, not for trial, but for embarkation ! These are the questions 
upon w^hich, I say, you must virtually decide. It is vain that the 
counsel for the Crown may tell you that I am misrepresenting the 
case ; that I am endeavouring to raise false fears, and to take 
advantage of your passions ; that the question is, whether this 
paper be a libel or not, and that the circumstances of the countiy 



DEFENCE OF FINNEETY. 213 

have nothing to do with it. Such assertions must be in vain ; 
the statement of the counsel for the Crown has forced the intro- 
duction of those important topics; and I appeal to your own 
hearts whether the country is misrepresented, and whether the 
Government is misrepresented. I tell you therefore, gentlemen 
of the jury, it is not with respect to Mr. Orr or Mr. Finnerty that 
your verdict is now sought ; you are called upon, on your oaths, 
to say that the Government is wise and merciful ; the people 
prosperous and happy ; that military law ought to be continued ; 
that the Constitution could not with safety be restored to Ireland; 
and that the statements of a contrary import by your advocates 
in either country are libellous and false. I tell you, these are the 
questions ; and I ask you, if you can have the front to give the 
expected answer in the face of a community who know the coun- 
try as well as you do. Let me ask you how you could reconcile 
with such a verdict, the gaols, the tenders, the gibbets, the confla- 
grations, the murders, the proclamations, that we hear of every 
day in the streets, and see every day in the country ? What are 
the processions of the learned counsel himself, circuit after circuit ? 
Merciful God ! what is the state of Ireland, and where shall you 
find the wretched inhabitant of this land ? You may find him 
perhaps in gaol, the only place of security, I had almost said of 
ordinary habitation ! If you do not find him there, you may see 
him flying with his family from the flames of his own dwelling — 
lighted to his dungeon by the conflagration of his hovel ; or you 
may find his bones bleaching on the green fields of his country ; 
or you may find him tossing on the surface of the ocean, and ming- 
ling his groans with those tempests, less savage than his prosecutors, 
that drift him to a returnless distance from his family and his 
home, without charge, or trial or sentence. Is this a foul misre- 
presentation ? Or can you, with these facts ringing in your ears, 
and staring in your face, say, upon your oaths, they do not exist ? 
You are called upon, in defiance of shame, of truth, of honour, 
to deny the sufferings under which you groan, and to flatter the 



214: LIFE OF CURRAN. 

prosecution that tramples you under foot. Gentlemen, I am not 
accustomed to speak of circumstances of this kind, and though 
familiarized as I have been to them, when I come to speak of 
them, my power fails me, my voice dies within me ; I am not 
able to call upon you : it is now I ought to have strength ; it is 
now I ought to have energy and voice, but I have none ; I am 
like the unfortunate state of the country, perhaps like you. This 
is the time in which I ought to speak, if I can, or be dumb forever ; 
in which, if you do not speak as you ought — you ought to be 
dumb forever." 

When Mr. Curran came to comment upon that part of the pub- 
lication under trial, which stated that informers were brought for- 
ward by the hopes of remuneration — " Is that," said he, " a foul 
assertion ? or will you, upon your oaths, say to the sister country, 
that there are no such abominable instruments of destruction as 
informers used in the state prosecutions in Ireland ? Let me 
honestly ask you, Avhat do you feel when in my hearing— when, 
in the face of this audience, you are called upon to give a verdict 
that every man of us, and every man of you, know% by the testimony 
of your own eyes, to be utterly and absolutely false ? I speak not 
now of the public proclamations for informers with a promise of 
secrecy and extravagant reward. I speak not of those unfortunate 
wretches, who have been so often transferred from the table to the 
dock, and from the dock to the pillory — I speak of v/hat your 
own eves have seen, dav after day, durino; the course of this com- 
mission, while you attended this court — the number of horrid 
miscreants who acknowledged, upon their oaths, that they had 
come from the seat of government — from the very chambers of 
the Castle (where they had been worked upon, by the fear of 
death and the hopes of compensation, to give evidence against 
their fellows) that the mild, the wholesome, and merciful councils 
of this Government are holden over those catacombs of living 
death, where the wretch, that is hurried a man, lies till his heart 
has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up a ivitness. Is 



THE PEEJUEED WITXESS. 215 

this a picture created by an Lag-ridden fancy, or is it fact ? Have 
you not seen him, after his resurrection from that tomb, make his 
appearance upon your table, the living image of life and death, 
and the supreme arbiter of both ? Have you not marked, when 
he entered, how the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his 
approach ? Have you not seen how the human heart bowed to 
the awful supremacy of his power, in the undissembled homage 
of deferential horror? How his glance, like the lightning of 
Heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused, and mark it for 
the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of woe and 
death — a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no 
force resist, no antidote prevent ? There was an antidote — a juror's 
oath ! But even that adamantine chain, which bound the inte 
grity of man to the throne of eternal justice, is solved and molten 
in the breath which issues from the mouth of the informer. Con- 
science swings from her moorings ; the appalled and affrighted 
juror speaks what his soul abhors, and consults his own safety in 
the surrender of the victim — 

et qu?e sibi quisque timebat 

Unius in miseri exitium couversa tulere. 

Informers are worshipped in the temple of justice, even as the 
devil has been worshipped by Pagans and savages — even so in 
this wicked country, is the informer an object of judicial idolatry 
— even so is he soothed by the music of human groans — even so 
is he placated and incensed by the fumes and by the blood of 
human sacrifices." 

It is some relief to turn from these descriptions (the truth of 
which any who may doubt it, will find authenticated by the his- 
torian), to the attestation which the advocate bore (and which he 
was alw^ays ready to bear) to the honourable and dignified demea- 
nour of a presiding judge.'" "You are upon a great forward 

* The Hon. William Downes. — C. [Downes was a dull and prosy man of great bulk, with 
an immense face terminating in a great double chin, like a gigantic dewlap, — Curran said, 



216 * LIFE OF CUERAIT. 

ground, with the people at your back, and the Government in 
your front. You have neither the disadvantages nor the excuses 
of juries a century ago. No, thank God ! never was there a 
stronger characteristic distinction between those times, upon which 
no man can reflect without horror, and the present. You have 
seen this trial conducted with mildness and patience by the court. 
We have now no Jefferies, with scurvy and vulgar conceits, to 
browbeat the prisoner and perplex his counsel. Such has been 
the improvement of manners, and so calm the confidence of 
integrity, that during the defence of accused persons, the judges 
sit quietly, and show themselves worthy of their situation, by 
bearing, with a mild and merciful patience, the little extravagan- 
cies of the bar, as you should bear with the little extravagancies 
of the press. Let me then turn your eyes to that pattern of 
mildness in the bench. The press is your advocate ; bear with 
its excess, bear with everything but its bad intention. If it comes 
as a villanous slanderer, treat it as such ; but if it endeavour to 
to raise the honour and glory of your country, remember that 
you reduce its power to a nonentity, if you stop its animadver- 
sions upon public measures. You should not check the efibrts of 
genius, nor damp the ardour of patriotism. In vain will you 
desire the bird to soar, if you meanly or madly steal from it its 
plumage. Beware lest, under the pretence of bearing down the 
licentiousness of the press, you extinguish it altogether. Beware 
how you rival the venal ferocity of those miscreants, who rob a 
printer of the means of bread, and claim from deluded royalty 
the reward of integrity and allegiance."^ 



" The most appropriate reply I ever made in my life -was to Bushe. It is rather long and 
somewhat laboured, but if you will bear with me, I will repeat it all in less than half an 
hour, by a stop watch. ' My Lord chief justice Downes,' says Bushe to me one day, with 
that large plausible eye, glittering in that kind of light which reveals to a shrewd obser- 
ver that he is quite sure he has you, ' my Lord chief justice Downes is beyond all compa- 
rison, the wittiest companion I have ever laiown or heard of.' I looked into B.'s eye, and 
said hwm 1 It required all Jiis oicn oil to keep smooth the surface of that face.'"~M. 
* The jury found a verdict against the traverser. The above extracts are taken from 



DEFENCE OF FINNEETY. 



217 



TRIAL OF PATRICK FINNEY. 

Mr. Curran's defence of Patrick Finney (who was brought to 
trial on January 16th, 1*798, on a charge of high treason), if not 
the most eloquent, was at least the most successful of his efforts 
at the bar. This may be also considered as the most important 
cause that he ever conducted, as far as the number of his clients 
could render it so ; for in addition to the prisoner at tiie bar, he 
was virtually defending fifteen others, against whom there existed 
the same charge, and the same proof, and whose fates would have 
immediately followed had the evidence against Finney prevailed. 
The principal witness for the Crown in this case w^as an informer, 
named James O'Brien, a person whom his testimon}" upon this 
trial, and his subsequent crimes, have rendered notorious in Ire- 
land. The infamy of this man's previous life and morals, and 
improbability and inconsistencies of his story, were so satisfac- 
torily proved to the jury, that, making an eftbrt of firmness and 
humanity very unusual in those days, they acquitted Finney; and, 
at the next sitting of the court, the fifteen other prisoners were in 
consequence discharged from their indictments. [On taking the 
oath of allegiance, and filing recognizances for good behaviour.] 

In speaking of Finney's acquittal, it would be an act of injustice 
to attribute it to the ability of Mr. Curran alone. He was assisted, 
as he was upon so many other occasions of emergency, by Mr. 
M'Nally,* a gentleman in whom the client has always found a 

a fuller report of Mr. Curran's speech upon this occasion than that w hich is to be found in 
the published collection. — C. 

[Finnerty was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, to stand in the pillory for an 
hour, to pay a fine of £20, and to give security for his future good behaviour. He finally 
became a member of the newspaper press in London, and sufifered imprisonment, in that 
capacity, for the publication of seditious libels.] — M. 

* Leonard M'Nally, Esq., for many years an eminent Irish barrister, and long since 
known to the English public as the author of Robin Hood, and other successful dramatic 
pieces, the productions of his earlier days. Among many endearing traits in this gentle- 
man's private character, his devoted attachment to Mr. Curran's person and fame, and, 
since his death, fo the interests of his memory, has been conspicuous. The writer of this 
cannot advert to the ardour and tenderness with which he cherishes the latter, without 
emotions of the most lively and respectful gratitude. To Mr. M'Nally he has to express 

10 



218 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

zealous, intrepid advocate, and in wlioni Mr. Curran, from his 
youth to his latest hour, possessed a most affectionate, unshaken, 
and disinterested friend. An instance of Mr. Curran's confidence 
in the talents of his colleague occurred upon this trial ; the cir- 
cumstance, too, may not be without interest, as an example of the 
accidents which influence the niost important questions. 

The only mode of saving their client Avas by impeaching the 
credit of O'Brien. It appeared in their instructions that tfiey had 
some, though not unexceptionable, evidence of his having extorted 
money, by assuming the character of a revenue officer. 

Some extracts from the cross-examination of this witness shall 
be inserted as too singular, on many accounts, to be omitted. It 
should be observed that Mr. Curran, upon this occasion, departed 
in some measure from his ordinary method of confounding the 
perjurer. Instead of resorting to menace or ridicule, he began by 
affecting a tone of respect, and even submission ; and, by thus en- 
couraging O'Brien's insolence, threw him oft' his guard, and led 
him on more completely to develope his own character to the 
jury:— 

James 0''Brien cross-examined hy Mr. Curran. 

Q. Pray, Mr. O'Brien, whence came you ? 

A. Speak in a way I will understand you. 

Q. Do you not understand me ? 

A. Whence ? I am here. Do you mean the place I came from ? 

Q. By your oath, do you not understand it 1 

many obligations for the zeal with which he has assisted in procuring and supplying 
materials for the present work. The introduction of these private feelings is not entirely 
out of place — it can never be out of place to record an example of stedfastness in friend- 
ship. For three and forty years Mr. M'Nally was the friend of the subject of these pages ; 
and during that long period, uninfluenced by any obligation, more than once, at his own 
personal risk in repelling the public calamities which Mr. Curran's political conduct had 
provoked, he performed the duties of the relation with the most uncompromising and 
romantic fidelity. To state this is a debt of justice to the dead: the survivor has an 
ampler reward than any passing tribute of this sort can confer, in the recollection that 
during their long intercourse not even an unkind look ever passed between them. — C. 
Leonard M'Nally died on the 15th of February, 1820.— M. 



JEMMY o'bKIEN. 219 

A. I partly censure it now. 

Q. Now that you partly censure the question, answer it. Where 
did you come from ? 

A. From the Castle. 

Q. Do you live there ? 

A. I do while I am there. 

Q. You are welcome, sir, to practice your wit upon me. Where 
did you live before you came to Dublin ? 

A. In the Queen's county. 

Q. What way of Hfe were you engaged in before you came to 
Dublin ? 

A. I had a ftirm of land which my father left me ; and I let it, 
and afterwards sold it, and came to Dublin to follow business I 
learned before my father's death. I served four years to Mr. 
Latouche of Marley. 

Q. To what business ? 

A, A gardener. 

Q. Were you an excise officer ? 

A. No. 

Q. Nor ever acted as one ? 

A. I don't doubt but I may have gone of messages for one. 

Q. Who was that 1 

A. A man of the name of Fitzpatrick. 

Q. He is an excise officer ? 

A. So I understand. 

Q. AVhat messages did you go for him ? 

A. For money when he was lying on a sick bed. 

Q. To whom ? 

A. To several of the people in his walk. 

Q. But you never pretended to be an officer yourself ? 

A. As I have been walking with him, and had clean clothes on 
me, he might have said to the persons he met that I was an excise 
officer. 

Q. But did you never pretend to be an officer ? 



220 LIFE OF CURBAN. 

A. I never did pretend to be an officer. 

Q. Did you ever pass yourself for a revenue officer ? 

A. I answered that before. 

Q. I do not y/ant to give you any unnecessar}- trouble, sir ; treat 
me with the same respect I diall treat you. I ask you again, did 
you ever pass yourself for a revenue officer ? 

A. Never, barring when I was in drink, and the like. 

Q. Then, when you have been drunk, you have passed as a 
revenue officer ? 

A. I do not know what I have done when I was drunk. 

Q. Did you at any time, drunk or sober, pass yourself as a 
revenue officer ? 

A. Never, when sober. 

Q. Did you, drunk or sober ? 

A. I cannot say what I did when I was drunk. 

Q. Can you form a belief — I ask you upon your oath — you are 
upon a solemn occasion — Did you pass yourself for a revenue 
officer ? 

A. I cannot say what happened to me when I was drunk. 

Q. What ! Do you say you might have done it when you were 
drunk ? 

A. I cannot recollect what passed in my drink. 

Q. Are you in the habit of being drunk ? 

A. Not now ; but some time back I was. 

Q. Very fond of drink ? 

A. Very fond of drink. 

Q. Do you remember to whom you passed yourself for a reve- 
nue officer ? 

A. I do not. 

Q. Do you know the man who keeps the Red Cow, of the 
name of Cavanagh ? 

A. Where does he live ? 

Q. Do you not know yourself ? 

A. There is one Red Cow above the Fox and Geese. 



JEMMY o'bRIEN. 221 

Q. Did you ever pass yourself as a revenue officer there ? 

A. I never was tliere but with Fitzpatrick ; and one day there 
had been a scuffle, and he abused Fitzpatrick and threatened him ; 
I drank some whiskey there, and paid for it, and went to Fitz- 
patrick and told him, and I summoned Cavanagh. 

Q. For selling spirits without licence ? 

A. I did, and compromised the business. 

Q. By taking money and not prosecuting him ? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Did you put money in your own pocket by that ? 

A. I did. 

Q. But you swear you never passed yourself for a revenue officer? 

A. Barrino- when I was drunk. 

o 

Q. Were you drunk when you summoned Cavanagh ? 

A. No. 

Q. When you did not prosecute him ? 

A. No. 

Q. When you put his money into your pocket ? 

A. No. 

Q. Do you know a man of the name of Patrick Lamb ? 

A. I do not ; but if you brigliten my memory, I may recollect. 

Q. Did you ever tell any man you were a supernumerary, and 
that your walk was Eathfarnham and Tailaght ? 

A. I never did, except when I was drunk ; but I never did any- 
thing but what was honest when I was sober. 

Q. Do you believe you did say it ? 

A. I do not know what I might have said when I was drunk. 
You know when a man is walking with an exciseman, he gets a 
glass at every house. 

Mr. Curran. — I know no such thing, never having vralked with 
an exciseman. 

Witness. — Then, you may know it. 

Q. Do you know any man passing by 4.hc name, or called 
Patnck Lamb ? 



222 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

A. Not that I recollect, upon my ivord. 

Q. Upon your oath ? 

A. I do not recollect : I mean to tell everj-tliing- against myself 
as against any other. 

Q. Do you know a person of the name of Margaret Moore? 

A. Where does she live ? Is she married ? 

Q. She lives near Stradbally. Do you know her ? 

A. I know her well — I thought it might be another. I was 
courting a woman of that name before my marriage. 

Q. Did you come to DubHn before her or after ? 

A. I was in Dublin before I knew her. 

Q. Did you get a decree against her ? 

A. I did get a summons for money she owed me. 

Q. Were you taken to the Court of Conscience by her ? 

A. No. (Contradicted by the evidence on the defence.) 
% ^ % M ^ * 

Q. When you met Hyland, were you an United Irishman ? 

A. Always united to every honest man. 

Q. Were you an United Irishman ? 

A. Never sworn. 

Q. Were you in any manner an United Irishman before that 
day? 

A. Never sworn in before that day. 

Q. Were you in any manner ? 

A. Do n't I tell you that I was united to every honest man ? 

Q. Do you believe you are answering my question ? 

A. I do. 

Q. Were you ever in any society of United Irishmen before 
that day ? 

A. I do not at all know but I may, but without my knowledge : 
they might be in the next box to me, or in the end of the seat 
with me, and I not know them. 

Q. Were you ever in a society of United Irishmen but that 
day ? 



JEMMY o'brien. 223 

A. I was since. 

Q. Were you ever of tlieir meetings, or did you know anything 
of their business before that day? 

A. No ; but I have lieard of the Defenders' business. 

Q. Were you of their society ? 

A. No ; but when they came to my father's house, I went to 
Admiral Cosby's and kept guard there, and threatened to shoot 
any of them that would come ; one Connelly told me I was to be 
murdered for this expression. 

Q. Hyland made signs to you in the street ? 

A. He did. 

Q. Did you answer them ? 

A. No. 

Q. Why did you not ? 

A. Because I did not know how. 

Q. Then, is your evidence this — that you went into the house 
in order to save your life ? 

A. I was told that I might lose my life before I went half a 
street, if I did not. 

Q. Then, it was from the fear of being murdered before you 
should go half a street, that you went in to be an United Irish- 
man ? 

A. You have often heard of men being murdered in the busi- 
ness. 

Q. Do you beheve that ? 

A. I do : it is common through the country ; I have read the 
proclamations upon it, and you may have done so too. 

Q. How soon, after you were sworn, did you see the magistrate ? 

A. I was sworn upon the 25th, and upon the 28th I was 
brought to Lord Portarlington ; and in the interval of the two 
days, Hyland was with me and dined with me. 

Q. Why did you not go the next day ? 

A. Because I did not get clear of them, and they might 
murder me. 



224 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

Q. Wliere did you sleep the first niglit after ? 

A. At my own place. I was very full — very drunk. 

Q. Did either of them sleep there ? 

A. Xo. 

Q. Where did you live ? 

A. In Keven street, among some friends good to the same 
cause. 

Q. Where did you see Hyland the next day ? 

A. He came to me next morning before I was out of bed, and 
stayed all day, and dined : we drank full in the evening. 

Q. What became of you the next day? 

A. Hyland came early again, and stayed all day. I was after 
getting two guineas from my brother. I was determined to see it 
out — to know their conspiracies after I was sworn. 

Q. Then, you meant to give evidence ? 

A. I never went to a meeting that I did not give an account 
of it. 

^ ^': ^ ^ ^ ^ 

Q. Do 3^ou know Charles Clarke, of Blue Bell ? 

A.. I have heard of such a man. 

Q. You do not know him ? 

A. I do : I do not mean to tell a lie. 

Q. You did not know him at first ? 

A. There are many men of the name of Clarke ; I did not 
know but it might be some other. It did not immediately come 
into my memory. 

Q. You thought it might be some other Clarke ? 

A. There is a Clarke came in to me yesterday. 

Q. Did you ever get money from Clarke, of Blue Bell, as an 
excise officer? 

A. I got os. Scl. from him not to tell Fitzpatrick : he did not 
know me, and I bought spirits there ; and seeing me walk with an 
exciseman, he was afraid I would tell of him, and lie gave me 
2s. Sd. 



225 

Q. And you put it in )-our pocket ? 
A. To be sure. 

* % * Ht ^ * 

Q. Did you pass yourself as a revenue officer upon him ? 

A. No. 

Q. You swear that ? 

A. I do. 

Q. You knoAv a man of the name of Edward Purcell ? 

A. That is the man that led me into everything. He has 
figured among United Irishmen. He got about J340 of their 
money, and went off. He has been wrote to several times. 

Q. How came you to know him ? 

A. Through the friendship of Fitzpatrick. He had Fitzpa- 
trick's wife, as a body might say, having another man's wife. 

Q. He made you acquainted ? 

A. I saw him there, and Fitzpatrick well contented. 

Q. Did you ever give him a recipe ? 

A. I did. 

Q. Was it for money ? 

A. No. 

Q. What was it ? 

A. It was partly an order, where Hyland, he, and I, hoped to be 
together. It was a pass-w^ord I gave him to go to Hyland to buy 
light gold that I knew was going to the country. 

Q. Did you ever give him any other recipe ? 

A. I do not know but I might : we had many dealings. 

Q. Had you many dealings in recipes ? 

A. In recipes ? 

Q. I mean recipes to do a thing ; as, to make a pudding, &c. 
Did you give him recipes of that nature ? 

A. I do not know but I might give him recipes to do a great 
number of things. 

Q. To do a great number of things ? What are they ? 

A. Tell me the smallest hint, and I will tell the truth. 

10^" 



226 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

Q. Upon that engagement, I will tell you. Did you ever give 
liim a recipe to turn silver into gold, or copper into silver ? 

A. Yes ; for turning copper into silver. 

Q. You have kept your word ? 

A. I said I would tell everything against myself. 

Q. Do you consider that against yourself? 

A. I tell you the truth : I gave him a recipe for making copper 
money like silver money. 

Q. What did you give it him for ? Did he make use of it ? 
Was it to protect his copper from being changed that you did it? 

A. He Avas very officious to make things in a light easy way, 
without much trouble, to make his bread light : but I did it more 
in fun than profit. 

Q. You did not care how much coin he made by it ? 

A. I did not care how much coin he made by it : he might put 
it upon the market cross. 

Q. Do you say you do not care how many copper shillings he 
made? 

A. I did not care whether he made use of it or not. 

Q. Upon your solemn oath, you say that you did not care how 
many base shillings he made in consequence of the recipe you 
gave him ? 

A. I did not care how inany he told of it, or Avhat he did 
with it. 

Q. Had you never seen it tried ? 

A. No, I never saw the recipe I gave him tried ; but I saw 
others tried. 

Q. For making copper look like silver ? 

A. To be sure. 

Q. Do you recollect whether you gave him half-a-crown, upon 
which that recipe was tried ? 

A. I never saw it tried ; but I gave him a bad half-crown. I 

did not give it him in payment : I did it more to humbug him 

than anything else. 

****** 



AN ARTFUL DODGE. 227 

Q. Do you know Mr. Roberts ? 

A. What Mr. Roberts ? 

Q. Mr. Arthur Roberts of Stradbally « 

A. I do. 

Q. Did you ever talk to any person about his giving a charac- 
ter of you ? 

A. He could not give a bad character of nie. 

Q. Did you ever tell any person about his giving you a 
character ? 

A. I say now, in the hearing of the court and jury, that I heard 
of his being summoned against me ; and, unless he would forswear 
himself, he could not give me a bad character. 

Q. Did you ever say you would do anything against him ? 

A. I said I would settle him ; but do you know how ? There 
was a matter about an auction that I would tell of him. 

Q. Had you a weapon in your hand at the time ? 

A. I believe I had a sword. 

Q. And a pistol ? 

A. Yes. 

Q. And you had them in your hand at the time you made the 
declaration ? 

A. I knew he was a government man ; and I would not do 
any thing to him in the way of assassination. 

While Mr. Curran was cross-examining O'Brien upon the point 
of his assuming the character of a revenue officer, the prisoner's 
agent accidentally heard, from some of the by-standers, that there 
was a man residing at the distance of a few miles from Dublin, 
whose testimony would place beyond a doubt that O'Brien was 
perjuring himself in the answers that he returned. A chaise was 
immediately despatched, to bring up this person ; and, in the inter- 
val, it was proposed by Mr. Curran, that he, who, as senior, was 
to liave commenced the prisoner's defence, should reserve himself 
for the speech to evidence, and that his colleague should state the 



228 LIFE OF CUxil^AN. 

case, and continue sjjeaklng as long as he could find a syllable to 
say, so as to give time to the chaise to return before the trial 
should be over. The latter, in v^hose character there was as little 
of mental as of personal timidity, accepted the proposal without 
hesitation, and for once belying the maxim that " brevity is tlie 
soul of wit," produced an oration so skilfully voluminous, that, 
by the time it was concluded, which was not until his physical 
strength was utterly exhausted, the evening was so far advanced, 
that the Court readily consented to a temporary adjournment, for 
the purpose of refreshment; and before it resumed its sitting, the 
material witness for the prisoner had arrived. "'^ 

For this important service rendered to their cause, Mr. Curran, 
in his address to the jury, paid his colleague a tribute, to which, as 
a man and an advocate, he was so well entitled. When, in the 
commencement of his speech, he alluded to the statement of his 
fi'iend, and expressed " his reluctance to repeat any part of it, for 
fear of weakening it," he turned round to him, threw his arm 
affectionately over his shoulder, and, with that pathetic fervour of 
accent so peculiarly his own, addressed him thus : " My old and 
excellent friend, I have long known and respected the honesty of 
your heart, but never, until this. occasion, ^^'as I acquainted with 
the extent of your abilities. I am not in the habit of paying 
compliments where they are undeserved." Tears fell from Mr. 
Curran as he hung over his friend, and pronounced these few and 
simple words ; and, however unimposing they may appear in the 
repetition, it certainly was not the part of his defence of Finnerty 
that touched the jury the least. 

His speech in this case (particularly in the imperfect report of 
it that has appeared) does not contain many passages calculated 
to delight in the closet. It is chiefly occupied in developing the 
atrocities of the detestable O'Brien ; and this object he accom- 



* Thomas Davis, who edited the last collection of Curran's speeches, possessed Leonard 
McNally's own copy (a gift from Curran himself) and left a memorandum to the effect 
that he spoke for three hours and a half.— M. 



A TEEJURED WITNESS. 229 

plished with signal success. That wretch, who had, in the early 
part of the trial, comported himself with so much triumpliant 
insolence, was for a moment appalled by Mr. Curran's description 
of his villanies, and by the indignant fury of his glances. He 
was observed palpably shrinking before the latter, and taking 
shelter in the crowd whicli thronged the Court. The advocate 
did not fail to take advantage of such a circumstance. " What 
was the evidence of the innocent, unlettered, poor farmer Cava- 
nagh ; pursuing the even tenor of his way in the paths of honest 
industry, he is in the act of fulfilling the decree of his Maker — he 
is earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, when this villain, 
less pure than the arch-liend who brought this sentence of labori- 
ous action on mankind, enters the habitation of peace and honest 
industry; and, not content with dipping his tongue in perjury, 
robs the poor man of two guineas. Where is O'Brien now ? — 
Do you wonder that he is afraid of my eye ? — that he has buried 
liimself in the crowd ? — that he crept under the shade of the 
multitude when this witness would have disentangled his evidence ? 
Do you not feel that he was appalled with horror, by that more 
piercing and penetrating eye that looks upon him, and upon me, 
and upon us all ? At this moment even the bold and daring 
villany of O'Brien stood abashed ; he saw the eye of Heaven in 
that of an innocent and injured man ; perhaps the feeling was 
consummated by a glance from the dock — his heart bore testi- 
mony to his guilt, and he fled for the same. Do you know him, 
gentlemen of the jury ? — Are you acquainted with James O'Brien ? 
If you are, let him come forward from the crowd where he has 
hid himself, and claim you by a look." 

Tlie religious character of Mr. Curran's addresses to juries, 
during these convulsed times, has been already adverted to ; of 
this the conclusion of his defence of Finney affords a striking 
example : — 

"This is the great experiment of the informers of Ireland, to 
ascertain how far they can carry on a traffic in human blood. 



230 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

This cannibal informer, this demon, O'Brien, greedy after human 
gore, has fifteen other victims in reserve, if fi-om your verdict he 
receives the unhappy man at the bar — fifteen more of your fellow- 
citizens are now in gaol, depending on the fate of the unfortunate 
prisoner, and on the same blasted and perjured evidence of 
O'Brien. Be 3'ou then their saviours ; let your verdict snatch 
them from his ravening maw, and interpose between yourselves 
and endless remorse. The character of the prisoner has been 
given. Am I not warranted in saying that I am now defending 
an innocent fellow-subject on the grounds of eternal justice and 
immutable law ? and on that eternal law I do call upon you to 
acquit my client. I call upon you for your justice ! Great is the 
reward and sweet the recollection in the hour of trial, and in the 
day of dissolution, when the casualties of life are pressing close 
upon the heart, or v.hen in the agonies of death you look back to 
the justifiable and honourable transactions of your life, xit the 
awful foot of eternal justice, I do therefore invite you to acquit my 
client ; and may God of his infinite mercy grant you a more last- 
ing reward than that perishable crown we read of, which the 
ancients placed on the brow of him who saved in battle the life of 
a fellow-citizen? In the name of public justice I do implore you 
to interpose between the perjurer and his intended \ictim ; and if 
ever you are assailed by the hand of the informer, may you find 
an all-powerful refuge in the example which, as jurors, you shall 
set this day to those that might be called to pass upon your lives, 
that of repelling, at the human tribunal, the intended efiects of 
hireling perjury and premeditated murder. And if it should be 
the fate of any of you to coimt the tedious moments of captivity, 
in sorrow and pain, pining in the damps and gloom of a dungeon, 
while the wicked one is going about at large, seeking whom he 
may devour, recollect that there is another more awful tribunal 
than any upon earth, which we must all approach, and before 
which the best of us will have occasion to look back to what little 
good we may have done on this side the grave. In that awful 



KETRIBUTIYE JUSTICE. 231 

trial — oil ! may your verdict tliis day assure your hopes, and give 
you strength and consolation, in tlie presence of an adjudging 
God. Earnestly do I pray that the author of eternal justice may 
record the innocent deed you shall have done, and give to you the 
full benefit of your claims to an eternal reward, a requital in 
mercy upon your souls." 

The fate of O'Brien is almost a necessary sequel to tlie trial of 
Finney. Mr. Curran, ^Yhom long observation in the exercise of 
his profession had familiarized to every gradation of atrocity, 
declared at the time, that, much as he had seen of crime, he had 
never met with such intense, unmitigated villany, as the conduct 
and countenance of this ruffian manifested ; and he did not hesi- 
tate to predict, that some act of guilt "would shorten his career. 
Two years after, O'Brien was tried for murder,* and by a kind of 
retributive justice, the two counsel who had rescued Finney were 
appointed to conduct the prosecution. 

Mr. Curran's speech in O'Brien's case is not distinguished by 
much eloquence ; but it possesses one quality, infinitely more 
honourable to him than any display of talent could have been. It 
is full of moderation, resembling as much the chai'ge of a judge 
as the statement of a prosecutor, and contains no vindictive allu- 
sion to the previous crimes of the prisoner. This the following 
exti-act will show : 

" The present trial is considered abroad as of some expectation. 
I am very well aware that when a judicial inquiry becomes the 
topic of public and general conversation, every conversation is in 
itself a little trial of the fact. The voice of public fame, the 
falsest witness that ever was sworn or unsworn, is always ready to 
bear testimony to the prejudice of an individual. The mind be- 
comes heated, and it can scarcely be expected, even in a jury-box, 



* An assemblage of persons of the louver orders having taken place in the suburbs of 
Dublin, for the purpose of recreation, the officers of the police, accompanied by O'Brien, 
proceeded to disperse them. The multitude fled, and in the pursuit one of them (named 
Hoey) was murdered by O'Brien.— C. 



LIFE OF CUFwKAN. 

to find it cool, and reflecting, and uninterested. There are t^vo 
tribunals to which every man must be amenable ; the one a muni- 
cipal tribunal, the other the great, and general, and despotic tri- 
bunal of public reputation. If the jury have any reason to sup- 
pose that any man who comes before them has been already tried 
by public fame, and condemned, I beg to remind them of the 
solemn duty that justice imposes on them ; to turn their eyes 
away from the recollection that any sentence of that sort of con- 
demnation has been pronounced by the voice of public reputation ; 
and if they think that his character has sunk under such a sen- 
tence, I remind the jury, that the infamy of such a condemnation 
is enough without their taking it into their consideration. It is 
the duty of the jury to leave the decrees of that court to be exe- 
cuted by its own authority, for they have no right to pass sentence 
of condemnation upon any man because that ill-judging court 
may have passed sentence on his character. They ought to 
recollect, that the evidence given before that court was unsworn, 
and therefore they are bound to consider the evidence before them 
naked and simple, as if they had never heard the name of the 
man they are to try, and the sentence of condemnation that pub- 
lic fame had pronounced upon his character. There is but one 
point of view in which public character ought to be taken ; that 
is where there is doubt. In such a case general good character 
ought to have great weight, and go towards the acquittal of the 
accused ; but should it so happen that general bad character should 
be thrown into the scale, it ought not to have one twentieth part 
the weight that good character should have. 

"The jury, I am satisfied, will deliberately and cautiously weigh 
the evidence to be produced ; they must be perfectly satisfied in 
their minds of the guilt of the prisoner. They must feel an irre- 
sistible and coerciv^e force acting on them, from the weight of the 
evidence, before, by their verdict, they pronounce that melancholy 
sentence which would remove a murderer from the face of the 
earth." 



JEM;>IY o'bRIEN. 233 

O'Brien was convicted and executed. Tlie populace of most 
countries are too disposed to regard tlie death of tlie greatest 
criminals witli sympatliy and regret ; but so predominant were the 
feelings of terror and detestation which O'Brien's character had 
excited, that his execution was accompanied by shouts of the most 
unusual and horrid exultation. 

Before dismissing the subject of this wretched man, one obser- 
vation should be made, of which the omission might seem to 
imply a reproach upon the conduct of the prosecutors in Finney's 
case. It may occur, that the information of such a person should 
not have gained a moment's attention, still less have endangered 
the lives of so many subjects. It is, therefore, only just to add, 
that the real character of O'Brien was unknown to the officers 
of the Crown, until it became developed in tlie progress of the 
trial. The Attorney-General, who conducted that prosecution, was 
the late Lord Kilwarden, a man the most reverse of sanguinary, 
and who, in those violent times, was conspicuous for correcting 
the sternness of his official duties by the tenderness "of his own 
amiable nature. His expiring sentiments had been the maxim of 
his life : " Let no man perish but by the just sentence of the law." 



234 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 



CHAPTER X. 

Rebellion of 179S — Its causes — Unpopular system of Government — Influence of the 
French Revolution — Increased intelligence in Ireland — Reform Societies — United Irish- 
men — Their views and proceedings — Apply for aid to France — Anecdote of Theobald 
Wolfe Tone — Numbers of the United Irishmen — Condition of the peasantry and conduct 
of the aristocracy — Measures of the Government — Public alarm — General insurrection. 

The order of tliis work has now brought us to the year 1*798 
— the year '98 ! — a sound that is still so full of terrible associations 
to every Irishman's imagination. During the agitated period 
which followed the transactions of 1782, Ireland had seen the 
newly-acquired spirit of her people, inflamed by disappointment, 
by suffering, and by ignorance, discharging itself in bursts of indi- 
vidual or local turbulence, Avhich were not much felt beyond the 
particular persons, or the immediate spot. But the hour, of which 
these were the prophetic signs, and of which so many warning 
and unheeded voices foretold the approach, at length arrived, 
bringing with it scenes of ci'vil stiife that struck dismay into 
every fibre of the community, sending thousands to the grave, 
thousands into exile, and involving many a virtuous and respected 
family in calamity and shame. 

In adverting to the events of this disastrous era, it would be an 
easy task to recapitulate its horrors, or, according to the once 
popular method, to rail at the memory of its victims ; but it is 
time for invective and resentment to cease; or, if such a feeling 
will irresistibly intrude, it is time at least to control and suppress 
it. Fifty years have now passed over the heads or the graves 
of the parties to that melancholy conflict, and their children ma} 
now see prospects of prosperity opening upon their country, not 
perhaps of the kind, or to the extent to which in her more ambi- 
tious days she looked, but assuredly a more rational description 



CAUSES OF REBELLION. 235 

than could have been attained by violence ; and such as, when 
realized, as they promise soon to be, will compensate for past 
reverses, or at all events console. At such a moment, in approach- 
ing this fatal year, we may dismiss every sentiment of personal 
asperity, or posthumous reproach ; without wishing to disturb the 
remorse of those upon either side who may be repenting, or to 
revive the anguish of the many that have suiiered, we may now 
contemplate it as the period of an awful historical event; and 
allude to the mutual passions and mistakes of those "who acted or 
perished in it, with the forbearance that should not be refused to 
the unfortunate and the dead. 

It has been seen, in the preceding pages, that the system by 
which Ireland was governed had excited general dissatisfaction, 
and that, in the year 1789, several of the most able and distin- 
guished persons in the Irish Parliament foi-med themselves into a 
body, for the avowed design of opposing the measures of the 
Administration, and of conferring upon their country, if their 
exertions could enable them, all the practical benefits of a free 
constitution. While they were scarcely yet engaged in this ardu- 
ous struggle, the French Revolution burst upon the world — not, 
as it has since been witnessed, presenting images of blood and 
disorder, but coming as the messenger of harmony and freedom 
to the afflicted nations. This character of peace and innocence 
it did not long retain, or was not allowed to retain ; but, in the 
progress of its resistless career, its crimes seemed for a while 
almost justified by the grandeur of their results, and by the impos- 
ing principles which they were committed to estabhsh. It soon 
appeared how popular talent, combined wnth popular force, could 
level all the old decrepit opinions against which they had confede- 
rated, and Europe was fixed with mingled wonder and dismay 
upon the awiid spectacle of a self-emancipated people seated upon 
the throne, from which they had hurled the descendant of their 
former idols as an hereditary usurper. 

The effects of this great event, and of the doctrines by which 



236 LIFE OF CUKKAX. 

it was defended, were immense. Every day some long-respected 
maxim was tried and condemned, and a treatise sent forth to jus- 
tify the decision. The passions were excited by addressing the 
reason — by bold and naked appeals to the primitive and undeni- 
able principles of human rights, without allowing for the number- 
less accidents of human condition by wliicli those rights must 
inevitably be modified and restrained. Philosophy no longer 
remained to meditate in the shade ; she was now to be seen direct- 
ing the movements of the camp, or marching at the head of tri- 
umphal processions, or presiding at civic feasts and regenerating 
clubs. In all this there was absurdity ; but there was enthusiasm. 
The enthusiasm spread with contagious fury. Every nation of 
Europe, every petty state became aniinated by a new-born vigour 
and unaccustomed pretensions ; and, as if awaldng from a long 
slumber, imagined that they had discovered in the old social bonds 
the shackles that enslaved them. " The democratic principal in 
Europe was getting on and on like a mist at the heels of the coun- 
tryman, small at first and lowly, but soon ascending to the hills, 
and overcasting the hemisphere.'"" This principle made its way 
to England, where the better genius of the constitution prevailed 
against its allurements : it passed on to Ireland, where it was 
welcomed with open arms by a people who had been long since 
ripe for every desperate experiment. 

During the twenty years which preceded the French Revolution, 
the progress of intelligence in Ireland had been unprecedented ; a 

* Mr. Grattan's Letter to the Citizens of Dublin. 

The readers of Milton will not fail to recognise this image, and to observe the use 
which men of genius can make of their predecessors. 

All in bright array 
The cherubim descendtd — on the ground 
Gliding meteorous, as evening mist 
Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, 
And gathers ground fast at the laborer's heels 
Pfomeward returning. 

Paradise Lost, Book xii. 



REVOLUTION. 237 

circumstance Avliich is to be in part attributed to the general dif- 
fusion of knowledge at the same period througliout tiie European 
community, but still move to the extraordinaiy excitement which 
her own domestic struggle had given to the Irish mind. In Ire- 
land almost the whole of this accession of intellect was expended 
upon pohtical inquiries, the most natural subjects of investigation 
in a country whose actual condition was so lar belov\' her most 
obvious claims ; and this peculiar attention to local politics seems 
to have been the reason that her contributions to general science 
and literature have not been commensurate with the genius and 
increased acquirements of her people. It has already been shown 
how much of this new energy was exerted npon the Parliament 
for the reformation of the old penal system, v.hich it was evident 
the nation had determined no longer to endure ; but the Parlia- 
ment was inexorable ; and, by thus unnaturally opposing, instead 
of conducting, and sometimes indulging, sometimes controlling 
the public sentiment, left it at the mercy of all whose resentment 
or ambition might induce them to take advantage of its exaspera- 
tion. 

Of such there were many in Ireland. There were several men 
of speculative and enterprising minds, who, looking upon the 
obstinate defence of abuses at home, and the facility with which 
they had been banished from a neighbouring country, became 
convinced that a Revolution would now be as attainable as a 
Reform, and that there was a fund of strength and indignation in 
the Irish people, which, if skilfully directed, would vanquish every 
obstacle. There is no intention here of passing any unthinking 
panegyric upon those who were thus meditating a conspiracy 
against the State — upon the merits of such fatal appeals to chance 
and violence, no friend to law and humanity can hesitate a moment 
— but it is due to historical truth to state, that, in the present 
instance, they were not a band of factious demagogues, of despe- 
rate minds and ruined fortunes, who were looking to a Revolution 
as a scene of confusion and depredation. In the formation of 



238 LIFE OF CUKPvAX. 

such a confederacy there could, indeed, have been no scrupulous 
selection of persons. Several, no doubt, entered into the associa- 
tion from private motives ; some from ambition — some from 
vanity — some from revenge ; but there Avere many whose mental 
attainments, and personal virtues, and enthusiastic fidelity to the 
cause they had espoused, extorted the admiration and sympathy 
of those who were the least disposed to justify their conduct, or 
deplore their fate. 

As early as the year 1791 the future leaders of the projected 
designs were taking measures for organizing the pubhc force, by 
producing a general union of sentiment among the various classes 
upon whose co-operation they were to depend. As yet neither 
their plans nor objects were distinct and defined ; but without any 
formal avowal of those objects to each other, and perhaps without 
being fully apprized themselves of their own final determinations, 
they took as eftectual advantage of every public accident as if the 
•svhole had been previously digested and resolved. About this 
period several of the friends to constitutional monarchy, among 
whom appeared some of the most respected and exalted characters 
in the country, united in forming political societies,^ for the purpose 
of collecting together all the rational supporters of freedom, and, 
by affording a legal and public channel of expression to the popu- 
lar sentiment, of preventing the adoption of secret and more for- 
midable combinations. Many of the persons, who were afterwards 
the most active promoters of more violent j^roceedings, became mem- 
bers of these societies, of which the avowed object was a simple 

* The principal of tliese was the Whig Club, which was formed under the auspices of 
the late Lord Charlemont. Tiie example was. soon followed by the establishment of 
Bocieties of United Irishmen at Belfast and Dublin, and finally in every part of the king- 
dom. It would be inconsistent»with the limits of this work to trace minutely the progress 
of these societies ; but it should be observed, that several who were leading members of 
the United Irishmen, when their designs had become revolutionary, were unconnected 
with them at an earlier period. It is also necessary to remark, that, though many of 
those who took an active part in their proceedings at every period of theii* existence 
would originally have been satisfied with a reform, there were exceptions. See the fol- 
lowing note. — C. 



UNTIED IP. IS 11 MEN. 239 

redress of grievances — and with this there are reasons to believe 
that the future leaders of the conspiracy would in the tirst instance 
have been satisfied ; but soon perceiving the improbability of such 
an event, while they continued, as members of the original and 
legal associations, ostensibly to limit their views to a Constitutional 
Reform, they were industriously establishing subordinate clubs* 
throughout the country, to which, in order to allure adherents, and 
to evade suspicion, they assigned the same popular denominations, 
and the same tests ; but, by impressing on the minds of all who 
were admitted (and all of every class were admitted) that no hope 
of constitutional redress remained, they speedily formed them 
into a widely extended confederacy, under the name of the 
Irish Union, for revolutionizing Ireland, and establishing a 
Republic. 

This statement refers more immediately to the north of Ireland, 
were a large portion of the inhabitants were Protestants or Dis- 
senters, who, having no religious disabilities to exasperate them, 
and being to a considerable degi-ee possessed of affluence and edu- 
cation, must be supposed to have been determined to republican 
principles upon purely speculative grounds. It should, however, 
be observed, that simultaneously ^^^th their proceedings, and 



* Entitled "Societies of United Irishmen." By the test of the more early of these 
societies, the members pledged themselves " to persevere in endeavouring to form a 
brotherhood of affection among Irishmen of every religious persuasion, and to obtain an 
equal, full, and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland in the Co7nmona 
Bouse of rarUameiU." In the year 1795 the latter words were struck out, in order to 
accommodate the test to the revolutionary designs that began to be generally entertained. 
Report of the Secret Coinmittee, 179S. It is a received opinion, that the celebrated 
Thobald Wolfe Tone was the author of the Constitution of the later United Irishmen ; 
but the writer of this work is informed that he himself denied this to be the fact. " He 
assured me (adds my authority) that Captain Thomas Russell, to whom he was for many 
years so warmly attached, was the person who drew up that remarkable paper, and that 
he (Tone) was not a member of the close society of United Irishmen till the eve of his 
embarking at Belfast for America, in the summer of 1795." It is, however, certain 
that Mr. Tone, as far back as 1791, strongly recommended to the societies of United 
Irishmen, then in their infancy, to attempt a Revolution, as appears from his letter 
written in that year to the society at Belfast. — Report of the Secret Committee. 
—(Appendix.)— C. 



240 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

without any connexion or communication with them, a most for- 
midable league existed among the poorer Catholics of several 
districts. These latter, assuming the name of Defenders,* had 
originally associated to repel the local outrages of their Protestant 
neighbours. The frequency and the length of the conflicts in 
which they were involved, had forced them into a kind of barbar- 
rous discipline and coherence ; and having now become confident 
from their numbers, and from their familiarity with success or with 
danger, they began to despise the laws, of which they had vainly 
invoked the protection, and to entertain a vague idea that their 
strength might be successfully employed for the improvement of 
their condition. While their minds were in this state of confused 
excitation, emissaries were despatched from the united societies to 
explain to them their wrongs, and to propose the remedy. The 
Defenders were easily persuaded by the eloquence of doctrines, 
which only more skilfully expressed their previous sentiments; 
and, laying aside their religious resentments and distinctive appella- 
tion, adopted the more general views and title of United Irish- 
men. 

Before the year 1796, societies of United Irishmen prevailed in 
every quarter of the kingdom. The great majority consisted of 
the lowest classes, of whom all that had the inducements of degra- 
dation, or of personal animosities, readily enlisted under a stan- 
dard that was to lead them to freedom and revenge. In order to 
secure an uniformity of action, and habits of subordination, a regu- 
lar and connected system (comprising committees, baronial, county, 
and prodncial ; and, finally, an executive) was established, and 
periodical returns of members admitted, arms procured, money 
contributed, and of every other proceeding, were made with all 
the forms and order of civil state. 



* The Defenders first appeared about the year 17S5: they increased rapidly, and 
soon attained a considerable degree of organization. From their oath and rules, 
•which are couched in the rudest language, it sufBciently appears that the Associatiou 
must have been composed of the lowest order in the community.— 0. 



PREPAKATIONS FOB REVOLT. 241 

Their numbers had soon become so great, that riothing but dis- 
cipline seemed wanting to the accomplishment of their objects; 
and when we consider the description of men of whom the mass 
was composed, we cannot contemplate without surprise the spirit 
of ardour and secrecy that they displayed, and the enthusiastic 
patience with which they submitted to the irksomeness of delay, 
and to the labours and dangers by which alone any degree of dis- 
cipline could be acquired. In the neighbourhood of the capital 
and the principal towns, where large bodies could not have assem- 
bled without discovery, they separated into very small parties, 
each of which appointed the most skilful to direct its manoeuvres. 
The most active search was made for persons who had ever been 
in the military profession, to whom every motive of reward, and 
rank, and expected glory, were held out, and generally with suc- 
cess, to allure them into the association. Under these they met, 
night after night, to be instructed in the use of arms ; sometimes 
in obscure cellars, hired for the purpose ; sometimes in houses, 
where every inhabitant was in the secret ; it even sometimes 
happened that in the metropolis these nocturnal exercises took 
place in the habitations of the more opulent and ardent of the 
conspirators. In the interior their evolutions were performed upon 
a more extensive scale. There, every evening that the moon, the 
signal of rendezvous, was to be seen in the heavens, the peasant, 
without reposing from the toils of the day, stole forth with his rude 
implement of war, to pass the night upon the nearest unfrequented 
heath, with the thousands of their comrades, who were assembled 
at that place and hour, as for the celebration of some unrighteous 
mysteries. It was also a frequent custom at this time, among 
the lower orders, to collect in large bodies, under the pretext 
indulging in some of the national games of force ; but for the 
secret purpose of inspiring mutual confidence, by the display of 
their numbers, and their athletic forms, and of exercising in those 
mimic contests the alertness and vigour which they were so soon 
to employ in the real conflict. The general enthusiasm was kept 

11 



242 LIFE OF C'CRHAK. 

alive by the distribution of songs in praise of freedom, arranged 
to popular native airs. Green, the old distinguishing colour of 
the island, and in itself, from its connexion with the face and 
restorative energies of nature, an excitant to the imaginations of 
men, who conceived themselves engaged in a struggle for the 
recovery of their natural rights, was adopted as their emblem. 
Their passions for spirituous liquors, a propensity that seems in 
some degree peculiar to those with w^hom it is the only luxury, and 
to those who have exhausted every other, was restrained, by explain- 
ing to them the embarrassment in Avhich the sudden non-con- 
sumption of such a source of revenue would involve the Govern- 
ment. And so intense was the ardour for the general cause, that 
this inveterate indulgence was sacrificed to such a motive, and the 
populace became for a while distinguished by habits of unaccus- 
tomed, and it might be said, impassioned sobriety.^' 

The leaders of the United Irishmen began now (1796) to look 
with confidence to the success of their desio-ns ; but foreseeina: 
that notwithstanding their strength and enthusiasm, the contest 
with the regular forces of the Government might be sanguinary 
and protracted, they were anxious to call in the aid of a disciplined 
army, which, by directing the movements and restraining the 
excesses of the insurgents, might enable them to decide the strug- 
gle at a blow\ For such a reinforcement they turned their eyes 
towards France. The documents produced upon Jackson's trial 
had lately given them public intimation, that that country was 
disposed to assist the Irish malcontents. The latter w^ere aware 
that France could have no interest in promoting a constitutional 
reform in Ireland, of which the obnous eftect would have been an 
accession of strength to the British empire : they therefore applied 
for a military aid to effect a separation fi'om England.f This 



* Of the preceding facts, some are taken from the report of the secret committee, 
and others are given upon the authority of individual information. — C. 

t The United Irishmen despatched an agent to France for this purpose, about the mid- 
dle of 1796. Mr. Tone was then at Paris, and exerted all his influence to the same effect. 



FJKAXCE AND THE KEBELS. 243 

would evidently be an important object with the French Govern- 
ment ; and it was the necessity of holding out such an inducement 
that in some degree determined the Irish directory to the final 
and extreme measure of a Revolution. The French authorities 
accepted the proposal, 'and immediately prepared for the embar- 
kation of an army, to co-operate with the Irish insurgents. But 
the main dependence of the leaders of the conspiracy was upon 
the Irish populace ; an agricultural population, full of vigour, 
burning for the conflict, and long inured to habits of insurrection. 
Of these, 500,000 were in arms. 

If it should here be asked by any of the many subjects of the 
same empire, who still continue strangers to the former condition 
of Ireland, how so long and formidable a system of secret organiza- 
tion could have been carried by her people for the violent design 
of revolutionizing her country ? the answer is not difficult. It 

lu the first memorial which Mr. Tone presented to the French directory in order to in- 
duce them to send an expedition to Ireland, he stated that at that period more than two- 
thirds of the sailors in the British Navy were Irish ; that he was present when the 
Catholic delegates urged this to Lord Melville as one reason for granting emancipation, 
and that his lordship had not denied the fact. This statement was understood to have 
had great weight with the directory, who immediately committed the whole of the subject 
to the consideration of Carnot (then one of the directory) and Generals Clark and 
Hoche. The gentleman who has communicated the preceding circumstances has added 
the following anecdote : Soon after an expedition to Ireland had been left to the decision 
of Carnot, Clark, and Hoche, they named an evening to meet Tone at the palace of Lux- 
embourg. Tone arrived at the appointed hour, eight o'clock. He was ushered into a 
splendid apartment. Shortly after the director and the generals made their appearance : 
they bowed coldly, but civilly, to Tone, and almost immediately retired, without apology 
or explanation, through a door opposite to that by which they had entered. Tone was 
a good deal struck by so unexpected a reception ; but his surprise increased, when ten 
o'clock arrived, without the appearance of, or message of any kind from those on whom 
all his hopes seemed to depend. The clock struck eleven, twelve, one— all was still in the 
palace ; the steps of the sentinels, on their posts without, alone interrupted the dead 
silence that prevailed within. Tone paced the room in considerable anxiety; not even 
a servant had entered of whom to inquire his way out, or if the director and the generals 
had retired. About two o'clock the folding doors were suddenly thrown open ; Carnot, 
Clarke, and Hoche entered ; their countenances brightened, and the coldness and reserve 
so observable at eight o'clock, had vanished. Clarke advanced quickly to Tone, and 
taking him cordially by the hand, said, '■'■Citizen! I congratulate i/ou : we go to Ire- 
land." — The others did the same; and having fixed the time to meet again, the persons 
engaged in this remarkable transaction separated. — C. 



244 LIFE OF CUBE AX. 

sprang from their degradation, and from the ignorance and 
revenge that accompanied it. The Rebellion of 1*798 was a ser- 
vile war. In Ireland her millions of peasantry were a mere collec- 
tion of physical beings, to whom nature had amply dispensed every 
human passion, but whom society had imparted no motives to 
restrain them. The informing mind of a free constitution had 
never reached them ; they never felt the trano[uillizing conscious- 
ness that they were objects of respect. In Ireland the State was 
not the '' great central heart," that distributed life and health, and 
secured them in return. The old Irish government was a mechani- 
cal, not a moral system ; it was, what it has been so often likened 
to, a citadel in an enemy's country ; its first and its last expedient 
was force ; it forgot that those whom no force can subdue, nor 
dangers terrify, will kneel before an act of conciliation. But it 
obstinately refused to conciliate, and the people at length, prepared 
by the sufferings and indignities of centuries, listened with sanguine 
or desperate credulity to the counsel which reminded them of their 
strength, and directed them to employ it in one furious eftbrt, 
which, whether it failed or prospered, could not embitter their 
condition. 

The spirit of the Government found a ready and fatal co-opera- 
tion in the gentry of the land. Never was there a class of men 
less amenable to the lessons of experience ; adversity, the great 
instructor of the wise, brought to them all its afflictions without 
their antidote. Every fierce, inveterate resentment of the race 
lineally descended, with the title-deeds, from the father to the 
child. Year after year the landlord's house was fired, his stock 
was plundered, his rent unpaid, his land a waste, and each succeed- 
ing year he was seen effecting his escape, through scences of tur- 
bulence and danger, from his estate to the capital, to make his 
periodical complaint of his sufterings, and to give the minister 
another vote for their continuance. 

The Irish landlord of the last century was the great inciter to 
insurrection. With a nominal superiority of rank and education. 



LANDLORD AND PEASANT. 245 

he was in every ferocious propensity upon a level with the 
degraded dependants, whom he affected to contemn, and whose 
passions he vainly laboured to control ; because he had never set 
them the example by controlling his own. Finding his efforts 
abortive, he next vindictively debased them ; and the consequence 
was, that in a little time he shared the same fate with his victims. 
The condition of Ireland during the eighteenth century affords a 
striking and melancholy example of the certain retribution with 
which a system of misrule will visit those who so mistake their 
own interests as to give it their support. An inconsiderable order, 
or a single sect, may (however unjustly) be degraded with impu- 
nity ; but the degradation of the mass of a nation will inevitably 
recoil upon its oppressors. The consequences may not always be 
visible in formidable acts of force ; but there is a silent and unerr- 
ing retaliation in the etlecis upon morals and manners, by which 
the tyrant is made eventually to atone for his crimes. In every 
condition of society the predominating sentiments and manners 
will spread and assimilate. In highly polished states they may be 
observed descending from the higher to the inferior ranks. The 
courtesy and humanity of the old French peer were found to give 
a tinge to the conversation of the mechanic. In uncivilized 
countries the progress is the reverse ; the rudeness of the boor 
will ascend and taint his master. The latter was the case in 
Ireland ; the Irish peasant, in his intercourse with his superiors, 
saw nothing of which the imitation could soften and improve him. 
The gentry, although conscious that their religion, and the violent 
means by which so many of them had acquired their properties, 
excited the suspicion and aversion of those below them, resorted 
to every infaUible method of confirming these hostile impressions. 
Instead of endeavouring to eradicate them by mildness and pro- 
tection, they insulted and oppressed. The dependant, unrestrained 
by any motive of affection or respect, avenged himself by acts of 
petty outrage. The outrage was resented and punished as an 
original unprovoked aggression. Fresh revenge ensued, and hence 



24:6 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

every district presented scenes of turbulent contention, in whicli 
tlie haughty lord lost whatever dignity he had possessed, and 
finally became infected with the barbarous passions and manners 
of the vassals whom he had disdained to civilize, till he required 
as much to be civilized himself. 

The attachment of the Irish peasant to the government v/as 
suspected ; but nothing could have been more unskilful than the 
means adopted to secure his fidelity. The Irish aristocracy, v,ho 
imagined that because they were loyal, they might proceed to 
every violent extreme, were a band of political fanatics, and would 
have made proselytes by the sword. They knew nothing of the 
real nature of the allegiance which they were so zealous to estab- 
lish, and which was never yet estabhshed by the sword. They 
were not aware that the allegiance of a nation to the state is a 
feeling compounded of a thousand others, half interest, half senti- 
ment, of gratitude, of hope, of recollections, of the numberless 
minute and " tender influences," that reconcile the subject to his 
condition ; that it is seldom a direct and defined attachment to the 
sovereign, but a collection of many subordinate attachments, of 
which the sovereign has all the benefit ; that it is but the youngest 
of the group of private virtues, and, like them, must be reared in 
the bosom of domestic comfort ; that it is upon the moral alle- 
giance of each rank to its immediate relations, of the servant to 
his master, of the artisan to his employer, of the tenant to his 
landlord, that must be founded the political allegiance of the 
whole to the State. 

Those mistaken loyalists supposed that they were teaching 
allegiance by a haughty and vindictive enforcement of the laws 
against its violation. They did not see that they were exacting 
from tlie laws what no laws could perform ; that their positive 
provisions must be always impotent, where their spirit is not pre- 
viously infused into the subject by manners and institutions. In 
Ireland these two Avere at perpetual variance. The Irish lawgiver 
passed his statute, i^;etting forth, in pompous phraseology, its wis- 



INTOLERANCE. 24:7 

dom and necessity, and denouncing tlie gibbet against the offender, 
and then returned to his district, to defeat its efficacy, by giving a 
practical continuance to the misery, the passions, the galling epi- 
thets, and the long train of customary insults and local provocations 
that were for ever instigating to crime. He did what was stranger 
and more absurd than this — he had the folly to put the State in 
competition with a power above it. He trampled upon the reli- 
gion of the people'* — not reflecting that, though by the doctrines 
of Christianity all injuries are to be forgiven, it had been the uni- 
versal practice of its various sects, for successive centuries, to 
except the offences committed against themselves. He pointed to 
the peasant's chapel, and gloried in the reflection, that the disloyal 
bell which had called their fathers to worship should never sound 
upon the ears of their children — as if to approach his Maker with 
a little show of decent pomp was not the harmless pride of every 
man of every faith upon the surf^ice of the globe. He thought he 
could drive them along the path of allegiance, where he had 
placed their religion to stop the way; and was surprised that, 
when the alternative was to be made, they should turn upon their 
driver rather than advance in the face of what they dreaded more 
than death. 

The mass of the Irish people were tillers of the soil, and were 
thus systematically debarred, by those who should have been their 
patrons and instructors, from every motive to be tranquil. The 
country gentleman, the great bulwark (if he performs his duties) 
against extended projects of revolution, hated them and feared 
them. He received them with sullen reserve when they brought 
him his rent, and trembled at the vigorous hands that paid it ; but 
there was no moral intercourse between them, no interchange of 



* The first attacks upon the Irish Catholics originated in the English parliament; but 
the Irish aristocracy gave the penal code their fullest support. Had the latter performed 
their duty, and undeceived England upon the supposed necessity of continuing it, the fute 
of Ireland would have been very different; but upon this subject England was abuced, 
and is to this hour abused. — C. 



248 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

sympatliy and endeaiing offices. The landlords, in constant alarm 
for their property and safety, would not convert the depredator 
into a protector. They opposed the tenant's education, which 
would have taught him to employ his idle hours in acquiring a 
love of order, instead of passing them in plans to recover in 
plunder what he had paid in rent, and looked upon as tribute. 
Erecting themselves into the little deities of their own district, 
they would not let the tenant touch of knowledge, lest he should 
" become as one of them." They drew between themselves and 
their natural allies a proud line of separation, which effectually cut 
off all communications of reciprocal affection, but proved a barrier 
of air against irruptions of hatred and of force. In Ireland there 
were none of those feudal pri\dleges which bring the persons and 
feelings of the Scottish dependants into closer contact with those 
of their superiors. The Irish peasant was never seen in the hall 
of his lord. He was left in his hovel to brood over his degrada- 
tion — to solace or inflame his fancy with legendary traditions of 
his country's ancient glory, and with rude predictions of her com- 
ing regeneration, and to hail, in every factious spirit, the Messiah 
that was to redeem her. 

These were the real causes of the avidity with which the Irish 
populace entered into this formidable conspiracy. The government 
was early apprised of its existence though not of its extent, and 
took very vigorous but ineffectual means to suppress it. Session 
after session it resorted to measures of terror or precaution, by 
penal acts and prosecutions, to try their efficacy ; but, of the per- 
sons thus proceeded against, the acquittal of many only served to 
bring discredit upon the Administration, while the executions of 
such as were convicted were regarded' by their party as so many 
acts of hostile severity, that called, not for submission, but revenge. 
The Ministers of the Crown conducted themselves, at this trying 
crisis, with a zeal which could not be too much applauded, if it 
were not so often carried to excess, and with the most undoubted 
fidelity to the powers w^hom they served ; but throughout they com- 



MINISTERIAL FOLLY. 24:9 

mitted one fatal error, which must for ever detract from their 
characters as able statesmen. Because it was evident that a few 
educated men were at the head of the popular combinations, they 
adopted, and to the last persisted in the opinion, or at least in the 
assertion, that the whole was essentially a conspiracy of a few 
speculative adventurers, who had seduced the nation from its alle- 
giance, and that all the power and wisdom of the State was to be 
confined to the counteraction of the malignant design ; and to this 
notion, notwithstanding its daily refutation, they adhered, with the 
spirit I'ather of persons engaged in an acrimonious controversy, 
than of ministers whose duty it was to save the country from the 
horrors of a civil war.'" It was to no purpose that the sophistry 
by which they defended it was exposed — it was in vain that they 
were told, by men who knew the state of Ireland and the general 
course of the human passions as well as they did, that their rea- 
sonings w^ould never satisfy the disaffected — that the dissatisfaction 
was not temporary or accidental, but radical — and that it was only 
a waste of time and of life to resort to unpopular laws and frequent 
executions, while the parent mischief remained untouched upon 
the statute book. The Irish Ministry not only spurned those coun- 
sels, which the event proved to have been prophetic, but, superadding 
a farther error, they reviled the advisers with so little discretion, 
that they gave the real conspirators official authority for believing 
that the opposers of the Administration vv^ere secretly the advo- 
cates of rebellion, and thus afforded them an additional incitement 
to persevere in their designs.f 

* Even after the suppression of the Rebellion, when the Government possessed the 
fullest information regarding its origin and progress, the Viceroy, in his speech to the 
Parliament, wa'3 made to saj% " the foulest and darkest conspiracy was formed and long 
carried on by the implacable enemy of this realm, for the tctal extinction of tJie Constitu- 
tion, etc." — Lord LieutenaiWs Speech, Octoler 6, 1798. 

t A leading member of the minority in the Irish House of Commons was the late Mr. 
George Ponsonby, a gentleman, who, if the purest constitutional views and personal dig- 
nity of deportment could have saved from insults, would have escaped them ; but at this 
period no dignity was a pi-otection. He, among others, impressed upon the Ministry that 
Ireland could be preserved from the threatened crisis by no means but by a complete 



260 LIFE OF CUKSAN. 

This glaring departure from the most obvious prudence has been 
variously accounted for. By many it has been attributed to inca- 
pacity. A more general opinion was, that the Government was 
fomenting the conspiracy, in order that the excesses to which it 
would lead might reconcile the nation to a Legislative Union : and, 
however vulgar and improbable the latter supposition may appear, 
it is still perhaps the only one that can satisfactorily explain the 
apparent inconsistencies and infatuation of their councils. 

The enemy of Great Britain had already made an abortive effort^' 



reform of the Parliament, by Catholic emancipation, and by an equalization of commerce 
between England and Ireland. The following was the answer of one of the servants of 
the Crown (the solicitor-general) to Mr. Ponsonby's opinions : " What was it come to, that 
in the Irish House of Commons they should listen to one of their own members degrading 
the character of an Irish gentleman by language which was fitted but for hallooing a mob ? 
Had he heard a man uttering out of those doors such language as that by which the hon- 
ourable gentleman had violated the decorum of Parliament, he would have seized the 
ruffian by the throat, and dragged him to the dust ! What were the house made of who 
could listen in patience to such abominable sentiments ? — sentiments which, thank God, 
were acknowledged by no class of men in this country, except the execrable and infamous 
nest of traitors, who were known by the name of United Irishmen, who sat brooding in 
Belfast over their discontents and treasons, and from whose publications he could trace, 
word for word, every expression the honourable gentleman had used." — Irish Farl. Deb. 
Feb. 1797. 

George Ponsonby, one of the " Old Whigs," was a man of mediocre capacity, owing hi3 
position mainly to the circumstance of his aristocratic connexions. His father had been 
Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. His cousin was Earl of Bessborough ; his father- 
in-law was the Earl of Lansborough. Born in 1755, he was called to the bar in 1780, and 
speedily was made King's Counsel, and Counsel to the Revenue Commissioners. Quar- 
relling with " the Castle," he was turned out of office, and became patriotic : 

" Here and there some stern, high patriot stood, 
Who could not get the place for which he cried." 

In the Irish Parliament he was one of the Opposition leaders, and was made Lord Chan- 
cellor of Ireland in 1S06. On the break up of the Fox ministry he lost his office, but was 
solaced with a pension of £4000, which he duly drew, year after year, until his death in 
July 1817. For some years after leaving Ireland, he was a Parliamentary leader of the 
Opposition in England. — M. 

* In December 1796 the French Fleet was dispersed by a storm. A part of it anchored 
in Bantry Bay, where it remained for some days ; but the vessel, on board of which Gen. 
Iloche (the commander of the expedition) was, not arriving, the French admu-al, without 
attempting a landing, returned to France. It is well known that grievous complaints were 
made in the English Parliament against the Ministry, for having left the coast of Ireland 



THE CROPriES. .261 

to transport an armament to Ireland, the landing of which was to 
have been the signal for the intended rising ; but the leaders of the 
Irish Union, still depending upon the promised renewal of the 
attempt, had been anxious to restrain the impatience of the people 
until the foreign succours should arrive. Disappointed, however, 
in their expectations from abroad, and apprehending from any fur- 
ther delay, either the uncontrollable impetuosity or the desertion 
of their followers, they resolved, in the early part of this year, 
against their better judgment, to bring the matter to a final issue. 
The 23d of May was fixed as the day for a general insurrection. 



so unprotected on this occasion. In explanation of this apparent negligence, Theobold 
Wolf Tone, who had been confidentially employed in the preparations for the French 
expedition (he was himself on board one of the vessels that anchored in Uantry Bay) 
related the following circumstances, as having come within his personal knowledge. 
While this formidable armament, which had so long fixed the attention of Europe, was 
fitting out at Brest, various conjectures prevailed as to its probable destination. The 
general opinion was that the invasion of either Ireland or Portugal was intented. — There 
was at this time (according to Mr. Tone's account) a secret agent of the British ministry 
at Brest, who, having discovered that a particular printer of that town had General 
Hoche's proclamations in his press, privately offered him a large sum for a single copy. 
With this offer the printer made General Hoche acquainted, who immediately drew up a 
proclamation, as addressed to the Portuguese by the commander of the French invading 
army. A few copies of this were accordingly, by the General's desire, struck off, and 
handed by the printer to the agent. The latter forwarded them to Mr. Pitt, whom the 
receipt of such a document is said to have so completely deceived, that he directed the 
British squadrons to make Portugal the peculiar object of their vigilance, and, in the first 
instance, treated the report of an actual descent upon Ireland with derision. Although 
the appearance of the French Fleet in Bantry Bay produced no movements of disaffection 
in the vicinity, it was yet at this period, or very shortly after, that the organization of 
the United Irishmen was most complete, and their prospect of success most promising. 
In 1797 they felt assured, that, in the event of a general insurrection, the greater number 
of the Irish militia regiments would have revolted. It is confidently asserted, that an 
attack upon Dublin having been proposed in that year, every soldier who mounted guard 
in that city on the night of the intended attempt was in their interests. The following 
occurrence, however ludicrous, is a striking proof of the prevailing sentiment among the 
native forces. At this time persons of democratic principles, in imitation of the French 
revolutionists, wore their hair short behind ; from which custom Croppies and Rebels 
became synonymous terms. A commander of yeomanry in Dublin, while reviewing his 
corps, observed a false tail lying upon the parade. He held it up, and asked who had 
dropped it. By an instantaneous movement, every man of the corps raised his hand to 
the back of his head. This corps is said to have been, in consequence, disbanded on the 
following day.— C. 



262 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 

Of this intention the government having- received information 
in the course of the preceding March, arrested several of the 
principal leaders in the capital ; and, announcing by proclamation 
the existence of the conspiracy, authorised the military powers to 
employ the most summary methods of suppressing it. 

This formal declaration of the impending crisis was followed by 
the most extreme agitation of the public mind. Every ear was 
catching, every tongue was faltering some tremendous confirma- 
tion that the hour was at hand. As it approached, the fearful 
tokens became too manifest to be mistaken. In the interior, the 
peasantry were already in motion. Night after night large masses 
of them were known to be proceeding by unfrequented paths to 
some central points. Over whole tracts of country the cabins 
were deserted, or contained only women and children, from whom 
the inquirers could extort no tidings of the owners. In the towns, 
to which, in the intervals of labour, the lower classes delighted to 
flock, a frightful dimunition of numbers was observed ; while the 
few that appeared there, betrayed, by the moody exultation of 
their looks, that they w^ere not ignorant of the cause. Throughout 
the capital, against which the first fury of the insurgents was to 
be directed, and where, from its extent, there could never be a 
certainty that the attack had not already begun, the consternation 
was universal. The spectacle of awful preparation, that promised 
security, gave no tranquillity. In the panic of the moment the 
measures for security became so many images of danger. The 
military array and bustle in some streets — the silence and desertion 
of others — the names of the inhabitants registered on every 
door — the suspension of j^ublic amusements, and almost of private 
intercourse — the daily proclamations — prayers put up in the 
churches for the general safety — families flying to England — part- 
ings that might be eternal — every thing oppressed the imagination 
with the conviction, that a great public convulsion w^as at hand. 
The Parliament* and the courts of justice, wdth a laudable attach- 

* On the 22d of May (the day before the ipsurreclion) the House of Commons voted an 



MAKTIAL LAW. 253 

ment to the forms of the constitution, continued their sittings; 
but the strange aspect of senators and advocates transacting civil 
business in the garb of soldiers, reminded the spectator that the 
final dependance of the state was upon a power beyond the laws. 
In Dublin the domestics of the principal citizens had disappeared, 
and gone off to join the insurgents ; while those, who could not be 
seduced to accompany them, became the more suspected, from 
this proof of their fidelity: they could have remained, it was 
apprehended, for the sole purpose of being spies upon their mas- 
ters, and co-operators in their intended destruction ; and thus, to 
the real dangers of a general design against the government, were 
added all the imaginary horrors of a project of individual ven- 
geance. The vigorous precautions of the Administration, instead 
of inspiring confidence, kept alive the public terror and suspense. 
In every quarter of the kingdom the populace were sent in droves 
to the prisons, till the prisons could contain no more. The vessels 
in the several bays adjoining the scenes of disturbance were next 
converted into gaols. The law was put aside : a non-commissioned 
oflicer became the arbiter of life and death. The military were 
dispersed through every house : military visits were paid to every 
house in search of arms, or other evidence of treason. The dead 
were intercepted on their passage to the grave, and their cofiins 
examined, lest they might contain rebellious weapons. Many of 
the conspirators were informally executed. Many persons who 
were innocent w^ere arrested and abused. Many who might have 
been innocent, were suspected, and summarily put to death. 

Upon the appointed day the explosion took place. The shock 
was dreadful. The imagination recoils from a detail of the scenes 
that followed. Every excess that could have been apprehended 
from a soldiery, whom General Abercrombie, in the language of 



address to the Viceroy, expressing their fidelity and their reliance upon the vigilance and 
vigour of his government. In order to render the proceeding more imposing, all tho 
members of that house, with the Speaker at their head, walked through the streets, two 
and two, and presented the address to his Excellency.— C. 



264: LIFE OF CURRAN. 

manly reproof had der^lared to be in a state of iiccirtiousness that 
rendered it formidable to all but the enemy; every act of furious 
retaliation to be expected from a peasantry inflamed by revenge 
and despair, and, in consequence of the loss of their leaders, 
surrendered to the auspices of their own impetuous passions, dis- 
tinguished and disgraced this fatal conflict.^' After a short and 
sanguinary struggle, the insurgents were crushed. The numbers 
of them who perished in the field, or on the scafibld, or were 
exiled, are said to have amounted to 50,000 ; — the losses upon the 
side of the crown have been computed at 20,000 lives ; — a solemn 
and memorable fact : — 70,000 subjects sacrificed in a single year, 
whose energies, had other maxims of government prevailed, might 
have been devoted to what it is equally the interest of subjects 
and governments to promote — the cause of rational freedom, the 
possession of which can alone inspire a manly and enlightened 
attachment to the laws and the state. 



* The high state of passion and resentment which prevailed at this unfortunate period 
may be collected from the single fact that in the House of Commons a member suggested 
that military executions should have a retrospective operation, and that the state pri- 
soners, who had been for several weeks in the hands of government, should be summarily 
disposed of; but the secretary. Lord Castlereagh) with becoming dignity and humanity, 
vehemently discountenanced so shocking a proposal. — C. [There is something ludicrous 
in any one's gravely speaking of the " humanity " of Castlereagh ! — M.] 



TRIAL OF THE SHEARESES. 555 



CHAPTER XL 

Trial of Henry and John Sheares. 

As soon as the public safety was secured (it was long before tran- 
quillity was restored) by the defeat of the insurgents, a general 
amnesty was granted to all, except the actual leaders of the con- 
spiracy, who should surrender their arms, and take the oath of 
allegiance to the King. Several of the leaders were in the hands 
of the Government, and it was now decided that the most conspi- 
cuous of them should be brought to immediate trial, in order that 
their fates should give a final blow to any still remaining hopes of 
their adherents. 

The first of the persons thus selected were two young gentle- 
men, brothers, and members of the Irish bar, Henry and John 
Sheares.* Their previous history contains nothing peculiar. They 
Avere both of respectable and amiable characters. The elder of 
them " had given many hostages to fortune ;" but with the ardour 
incidental to their years, and to the times, they had been induced 
to look beyond those sources of private happiness which they 
appear to have abundantly enjoyed, and to engage in the political 
speculations that were now to be expiated with their lives. When 
the original members of the Irish executive were committed to 
prison, in the month of March, the Sheareses were among those 
who were chosen to supply their place, and they took a ^ery 
active part in arranging the plan of the approaching insurrection. 

* The Sheareses were arrested on the 21st of May, 1798, two days before the rising of the 
people. They were two Cork gentlemen, "barristers by profession," says Davis, ^'both 
men of liberal education, but of very unequal characters. Henry, the eldest, was mild, 
changeful, weak: John was fiery and firm, and of much greater abilities."— M. 



256 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

Of all these proceedings tlie Govermnent obtained accurate infor- 
mation tlirougli a Captain Armstrong, an officer of the Irish 
militia, who had succeeded in insinuating himself into their con- 
fidence, for the purpose of discovery.* They were accordingly 
arrested two days previous to the explosion, and were now sum- 
moned to abide their trial for high treason. 

Mr. Currants defence of these unfortunate brothers was sup- 
pressed at the period, and is generally supposed to have alto- 
gether perished. A report of the trial has, however, been pre- 
served, from which an account of the share that he bore in it 
shall now be given .f 

The prisoners were brought to the bar, and arraigned, on the 
4th of July, 1798.;}; In this stage of the proceedings, a very inte- 
resting and important discussion took place. Their counsel hav- 
ing discovered that one of the grand jury, who had found the 
bill of indictment, was a naturalized Frenchman,§ pleaded that 



* Of Captain Armstrong, Davis says, " This frightful wretch had sought the acquaint- 
ance of the Sheareses — made it—encouraged their prospects — assisted them with military- 
hints — professed tender love for them — mixed with their family, and used to dandle Henry 
Sheares's children. * * * He shared their hospitality — urged on their schemes — came 
to condole with them in prison — and then assassinated them with his oath." John Warne- 
ford Armstrong was Captain in the King's County Militia. He made the acquaintance 
of the Sheareses to get them into his clutches, and dined with John the day before the 
arrest. He had actually known them only ten days before that. Barrington says that 
Henry Sheares " was a participator in the treason, and aided in procuring emissaries to 
seduce the troops at Loughlinston. There CapUiin Armstrong became acquainted with the 
two brothers — pledged to them his friendship — persuaded them he would seduce his regi- 
ment — gained their implicit confidence — faithfully fulfilled the counter-plot — devised 
several secret meetings — and worked up sufficient guilt to sacrifice the lives of both." — M. 

t The father of the Sheareses, a Banker in Cork, had been a member of the Irish Par- 
liament, and in that capacity had succeeded in carrying an act (5th George III.) by 
which was conceded to prisoners the right to have counsel assigned them by the Court and 
to have a copy of the indictment. Under this statute, Mr. Curran and Mr. McNally were 
assigned as counsel to John Sheares, and Mr. Plunket for Henry Sheares. — M. 

X The trial took place before Lord Carleton, Barons ^mith and George, and Justice 
Daly.— M. 

§ It was McNally who filed the plea that John Decluzeau, one of the jurors who found 
the bills, for High Treason, against the Sheareses and for others, was an alien, not naturali- 
z&d. The Crown lawyers argued against this plea, and then, in reply, Curran spoke in 
its support. — M. 



TRIAL OF THE SHEARSESES. 257 

fact against its legality. The following are parts of Mr. Curran's 
argument npon the occasion : "^ 

" My lords ; the law of this country has declared, that in order 
to the conviction of any man, not only of any charge of the 
higher species of criminal offences, but of any criminal charge 
whatsoever, he must be convicted upon the finding of two juries ; 
first, of the grand jury, who determine upon the guilt in one point 
of view ; and, secondly, by the corroborative finding of the petty 
jury, who establish that guilt in a more direct manner ; and it is 
the law of this country, that the jurors, who shall so find, whether 
upon the grand or upon the petty inquest, shall be probi et legales 
homines omni exceptione majores. They must be open to no legal 
objection of personal incompetence ; they must be capable of 
having freehold property, and in order to have freehold property, 
they must not be open to the objection of being born under the 
jurisdiction of a foreign prince, or owing allegiance to any foreign 
power. Because the law of this country, and indeed the law of 
every country in Europe, has thought it an indispensable precau- 
tion, to trust no man with the weight or influence which territo- 
rial possession may give him contrary to that allegiance which 
ought to flow from such possession of property in the country. 
This observation is emphatically forcible in every branch of the 
criminal law ; but in the law of treason, it has a degree of force 
and cogency that fails in every inferior class of oftence ; because 
the very point to be inquired into in treason is the nature of alle- 
giance. The general nature of allegiance may be pretty clear to 
every man. Every man, however unlearned he may be, can easily 
acquire such a notion of allegiance, whether natural and born 
with him, or whether it be temporary and contracted by emigra- 
tion into another country ; he may acquire a vague, untechnical 

* Different statutes of Charles II. Geo. I. and Geo. III. enact, that naturalized aliens, 
performing certain specified conditions, "shall be deemed liege, free, and natural sub- 
jects, to all intents and purposes;" with a proviso "that they shall not be enabled to 
serve in Parliament, nor to be of his majesty's privy council, nor to hold any office of 
trust, civil or military, in the kingdom.— C. 



258 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

idea of allegiance, for his immediate personal conduct. But I am 
warranted in saying that the constitution does not suppose that 
any foreigner has any direct idea of allegiance but what he owes 
to his original prince. The constitution supposes, and takes for 
granted, that no foreigner has such an idea of our peculiar and 
precise allegiance, as qualifies him to act as a juror, where that is 
the question, to be inquired into ; and I found myself upon this 
known principle, that though the benignity of the English law 
has, in many cases, where strangers are tried, given a jury, half 
composed of foreigners and half natives, that benefit is denied to 
any man accused of treason, for the reason I have stated ; because, 
says Sir W. Blackstone, 'aliens are very improper judges of the 
breach of allegiance.'* A foreigner is a most improper judge 
of what the allegiance is which binds an English subject to his 
constitution. And, therefore, upon that idea of utter incompe- 
tency in a stranger, is every foreigner directly removed and repelled 
from exercising a function that he is supposed utterly unable to 
discharge. If one Frenchman shall be suffered to find a bill of 
indictment between our Lord the King and his subjects, by a 
parity of reasoning may twenty-three men of the same descent be 
put into the box, with authority to find a bill of indictment. By 
the same reason, that the court may communicate Avith one man 
whose language they do not know, may they communicate with 
twenty-three natives of twenty-three difterent countries and lan- 
guages. How far do I mean to carry this ? Thus far : that every 
statute, or means by which allegiance may be shaken of!', and any 
kind of benefit or privilege conferred upon an emigrating foreigner, 
is for ever to be considered by a court of justice with relation to 
that natural incompetency to perform certain trusts, which is 
taken for granted and established by the law of England. 

" Therefore, my lord, my clients have pleaded, that the bill of 
indictment to which they have been called upon to answer has 

* 4 Bl, Com. 852.— C. 



EIGHTS OF ALIENS. 259 

been found, among others, by a foreigner, born under a foreign 
allegiance and incapable of exercising tlie right of a juror, upon 
the grand or the petty inquest. The stat. of Charles II. recites 
that the kingdom was wasted by the unfortunate troubles of that 
time, and that trade had decreased for want of merchants. After 
thus stating generally the grievances which had afflicted the trade 
and population of the country, and the necessity of encouraging 
emigration from abroad, it goes on and says, that strangers may 
be induced to transport themselves and families to replenish the 
country, if they may be made partakei-s of the advantages and 
free exercise of their trades without interruption and disturbance. 
The grievance was the scarcity of men; the remedy was the encour- 
agement of foreigners to transport themselves, and the encourage- 
ment given was such a degree of protection as was necessary to 
the full exercise of their trades in the dealing, buying and selling 
and enjoying the full extent .of personal secuiity. Therefore it 
enacts, that all foreigners of the protestant religion, and all mer- 
chants, &c. who shall, within the term of seven years, transport 
themselves to this country shall be deemed and reputed natural- 
born subjects, and 'may implead and be impleaded,' and 'prose- 
cute and defend suits.' The intention was to give them protection 
for the purposes for which they were encouraged to come here ; 
and therefore the statute, instead of saying, generally, ' they shall 
be subjects to all intents and purposes,' specifically enumerates the 
privileges they shall enjoy. If the legislature intended to make 
them ' subjects to all intents and purposes,' it had nothing more 
to do than say so.'^" But not having meant any such thing, the 
statute is confined to the enumeration of the mere hospitable 
rights and privileges to be granted to such foreigners as come here 
for special purposes. It states, ' he may implead, and he shall be 
answered unto ;' that ' he may prosecute and defend suits.' Why 
go on and tell a man, who is to all intents and purposes a natural- 

* The statute does say this generally, in the first instance; but the subsequent enu- 
meration of particuhir privileges supports the view that Mr. Curran took of it. — C. 



260 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

born subject, that lie may implead and bring actions ? I say, it 
is to all intents and purposes absurd and preposterous. If all 
privileges be granted in the first instance, why mention particular 
parts afterwards ? A man would be esteemed absurd, who by his 
grant gave a thing under a general description, and afterwards 
granted the particular parts. What would be thought of a man, 
who gave another his horse, and then said to the grantee, ' I also 
give you liberty to ride him when and where you please V AVhat 
was the case here ? The government of Ireland said, ' we want 
men of skill and industry; we invite you to come over; our inten- 
tion is, that if you be protestants, you shall be protected ; but you 
are not to be judges, or legislators, or kings; we make an act of 
parliament, giving you protection and encouragement to follow 
the trades, for your knowledge in which we invite you. You are 
to exercise your trade as a natural- born subject. How ? ' With 
full power to make a bargain and enforce it. We invest you with 
the same power, and you shall have the same benefit, as if you 
Avere appealing to your own natural forum of public justice. You 
shall be here as a Frenchman in Paris, buying and selling the 
commodities appertaining to your trade.' 

" Look at another clause in the act of Parliament, which is said 
to make a legislator of this man, or a juror, to pass upon the 
life or death of a fellow-subject — no, not a fellow-subject, but a 
stranger. It says, 'you may purchase an estate, and you may 
enjoy it, without being a trustee for the crovv^n.' Why was that 
necessary, if he were a subject to all intents and purposes ? But, 
m}^ lords, a great question remains behind to be decided upon. I 
know of no case upon it. I do not pretend to say that the indus- 
try of other men may not have discovered a case. But I would 
not be surprised if no such case could be found — if, since the his- 
tory of the administration of justice, in all its foi-ms, in England, 
a stranger had not been found intruding himself into its con- 
cerns — if, through the entire history of our courts of justice, an 
instance was not to be found of the folly of a stranger interfering 



AN alie:n grand juror. 261 

upon so awful a subject as the bj'cacli of allegiance between a 
subject and his king. ^ly lords, I beg leave upon this part to say 
that it would be a most formidable thing, that a court of justice 
would pronounce a determination big with danger, if they should 
say that an alien may find a bill of indictment involving the 
doctrine of allegiance. It is permitting him to intermeddle in a 
business of which he cannot be supposed to have any knov^ledge. 
Shall a subject of the Irish Crown be charged Avith a breach of 
his allegiance upon the saying of a Geraian, an Italian, a French- 
man, or a Spaniard ? Can any man suppose any thing more 
monstrous or absurd, than that of a stranger being competent to 
form an opinion upon the subject ? I would not form a supposi- 
tion upon it. At a time w^hen the generals, the admirals, and the 
captains of France, are endeavouring to pour their armies upon 
us, shall we permit their petty detachments to attack us in judicial 
hostility ? Shall we sit inactive, and see their skirmishes take off 
our fellow-subjects by explosions in a jury-room ? 

" When did this man come into this country ? Is the raft upon 
which he floated now in court ? What has he said upon the back 
of the bill ? What understanding had he of it ? If he can write 
more than his own name, and had written ' ignoramus ' upon the 
back of the indictment, he might have Avritten truly ; he might 
say he knew nothing of the matter. He says he is naturalized. 
' I am glad of it ; you are welcome to Ireland, sir ; you shall have 
all the privileges of a stranger, independent of the invitation by 
which you came. If you sell, you shall recover the price of your 
wares ; you shall enforce the contract. If you purchase an estate, 
you shall transmit it to your children, if you have any ; if not, your 
devisee shall have it. But you must know, that in this constitu- 
tion there are laws binding upon the court as strongly as upon 
you. The statute itself, Avhich confers the privileges you enjoy, 
makes you incapable of discharging offices. W^hy ? Because 
they go to the fundamentals of the constitution, and belong only 
to those men who have an interest in that constitution transmitted 



262 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

to them from their ancestors.' Therefore, my lords, the foreigner 
must be content ; he shall be kept apart from the judicial func- 
tions ; — in the extensive words of the act of parliament, he shall 
be kept from ' all places of trust whatsoever.' If the act had been 
silent in that part, the court would, not^Yithstanding, be bound to 
say tliat it did not confer the power of filling the high departments 
of the state. The alien would still be incapable of sitting in either 
house of parliament — he would be incapable of advising with the 
king, or holding any place of constitutional trust whatever. 
"What ? shall it be said there is no trust in the office of a grand 
juror? I do not speak or think lightly of the sacred oflice con- 
fided to your lordships, of administering justice between the crown 
and subject, or between subject and subject ; — I do not compare 
the ofiice of grand juror to that ; — but, in the name of God, v/ith 
regard to the issues of life and death — with regard to the conse- 
quences of imputed or established criminality — what difference is 
there in the constitutional importance between the juror who 
brings in a verdict, and the judge who pronounces upon that ver- 
dict the sentence of the law ? Shall it be said that the former is 
no place of trust? What is the place of trust meant by the 
statute ? It is not merely ginng a thing to another, or depositing 
it for safe custody ; it means constitutional trust, the trust of exe- 
cuting given departments, in which the highest confidence must 
be reposed in the man appointed to perform them. It means not 
the trust of keeping a paltry chattel — it means the awful trust of 
keeping the secrets of the state and of the king. Look at the 
weight of the obligation imposed upon the juror — look at the 
enormous extent of the danger, if he violate or disregard it. At 
a time like the present, a time of war — what, is the trust to be 
confided to the conscience of a Frenchman ? But I am speaking 
for the lives of my clients ; and I do not choose even here to state 
the terms of the trust, lest I might furnish as many hints of mis- 
chief as I am anxious to furnish arguments of defence. But shall 
a Frenchman at this moment be entrusted with those secrets upon 



ARGUMENTS AGAINST ALIENS. 263 

which your sitting on the bench may eventually depend ? What 
is the inquiry to be made ? Having been a pedlar in the country, 
is he to have the selling of the country, if he be inclined to do so? 
Is he to have confided to him the secrets of the state ? He may 
remember to have had a jir8t allegiance, and that he was sworn to 
it. He might find civilians to aid his perfidious logic, and to tell 
him that a secret, communicated to him by the humanity of the 
country which received him, might be disclosed to the older and 
better natured allegiance sworn to a former povv^er ! He might 
give up the perfidious use of his conscience to the integrity of the 
older title. Shall the power of calling upon an Irishman to take 
his trial before an Irish judge, before the country, be left to the 
broken speech, the lingua franca of a stranger, coming among 
you, and saying, ' I was naturalized by act of parliament, and I 
cannot carry on my trade v/ithout dealing in the blood of your 
citizens V He holds up your statute as his protection, and flings 
it against your liberty, claiming the right of exercising a judicial 
function, and feeling, at the same time, the honest love for an 
older title to allegiance. It is a love which every man ought to 
feel, and which every subject of this country would feel, if he left 
his country to-morrow, and were to spend his last hour among the 
Hottentots of Africa. I do trust in God there is not a man that 
hears me, who does not feel that he would carry with him, to the 
remotest part of the globe, the old ties which bound him to his 
original friends, his country, and his king. I do, as the advocate 
of my clients, of my country — as the advocate for you, my lords, 
whose elevation prevents you from the possibility of being advo- 
cates for yourselves — for your children I do stand up ; and rely 
upon it, that this act of parliament has been confined to a limited 
operation ; it was enacted for a limited purpose, and will not allow 
this meddling stranger to pass upon the life, fame, or fortune of 
the gentlemen at the bar — of me, their advocate — of you, their 
judges — or of any man in the nation. It is an intrusion not to 
be borne." 



2G4 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

Mr. Plunket followed Mr. Curran on the same side ; but, after a 
long discussion, it was ruled by the court, that the office of grand 
juror was not one of the offices of trust alluded to by the legis- 
lature, and, consequently, that the person objected to was competent 
to fill it. The prisoners were, therefore, in the language of the 
law, " awarded to answer over." Their trial was, upon their own 
application, in consequence of the absence of witnesses, postponed 
till the 12th of July, when it came on for final decision before 
Lord Carleton, Mr. Justice Croohshank, and Mr. Baron Smith.^' 

Mr. Curran's speech upon this occasion,| which was considered 
as the most moving that he had ever pronounced, was rendered 
peculiarly aftecting, by the circumstances that accompanied its 
delivery. Notwithstanding the length of many of the state trials 
of this period, the courts seldom adjourned till the proceedings 
were concluded, so that their sittings were not only protracted 
to a late hour of the night, but it was not unusual for the return- 
ing morning to find them still occupied with their melancholy 
labours.^ 

* The Attorney-General of that day, who stated the case for the Crown, was John 
Toler, — afterwards known as Lord Norbury, " the hanging judge," who would jest with 
the culprit as he sentenced him to the Gallows. — Alderman Alexander proved that he had 
found in the open desk of Henry Sheares, in Bagjfot Street, a rough draft of a rebellious 
proclamation to the People of Ireland, in the handwriting of John Sheares. Armstrong 
was examined for tJi-e Crown by Saurin. — On the trial it was for Henry Sheares in 
particular, that Curran spoke. Mr. Davis, who had seen the brief of prisoners' Coun- 
sel, and knew that John Sheares had actually dictated the defence, states that they 
admitted his part in the proceedings against the Government, and, in fact, indicated to 
Counsel his desire to save his brother Henry even at the risk of his (John's) life. — M. 

t This speech in its reported state, is by no means the most favourable specimen of 
Mr. Curran's eloquence. Several passages in it are broken and unconnected, which may 
be attributed either to the incorrectness of the reporter, or to the extreme exhaustion of 
the speaker. If the defect arose from the latter cause, the solemnity of his delivery 
atoned for it with his auditors; for nothing could exceed the effect which it pi-oduced 
upon them. The suppression of this defence has been so often the subject of public 
regret, that the whole of it, as it has been preserved, is given here. — C. [This is an 
error. In Davis's edition of Curran's speeches, a fuller report is given.] M. 

X George Ponsonby opened for Henry and Plunket for John Sheares. M'Nally pressed 
some law points with little effect. Three witnesses were then examined to prove Captain 
Armstrong an Atheist : two that he was an avowed Republican and rebel. Several wit- 
nesses testified as to the character of the Sheareses. The trial had commenced at nine 



TRIAL OF THE SHEARESES. ' 265 

It was midnight when Mr. Curran rose to address the jury; and 
the feelings ^v\th. wliich he entered on the task cannot be perfectly 
conceived, without adverting to the persons who were grouped 
around him. At the bar stood his clients, connected with each 
other by blood, with their advocate, and many more of the sur- 
rounding audience, by profession, and with the presiding judge by 
the ties of hereditary friendship/'^" Upon the bench he saw in 
Lord Carleton one of his own oldest and most valued friends, with 
whom he was now to intercede, if intercession could avail, for 
those who had so many tender claims to his merciful considera- 
tion ; while upon the jury appeared several whom Mr. Curran (and 
probably his clients) had long known as acquaintances and com- 
panions, and Avith more than one of whom he had lived, and was 
still living, upon terms of the most confidential intimacy. When 
to this collection of private relations, so unusual upon such an 
occasion, are added the other attending public circumstances, it 
is not surprising that the surviving spectators of this memorable 
scene should speak of it as marked by indescribable solemnity. 
The fate that impended over the unfortunate brothers — the per- 
turbed state of Ireland — the religious influence of the hour — the 
throng of visages in the galleries, some of them disfigured by 
poverty, others betraying, by their impassioned expression, a 
consciousness of participation in the offence for which the accused 

in the morning. At midnight, after fifteen hours' sitting, in a crowded court, in midsum- 
mer, Curran entreated the delay of a few hours " for repose, or rather for recollection." 
If necessary, said he, "I will go on, if I sink." Lord Carleton, instead of adjourning 
until the next morning, which he could have done, asked the Attorney-General's opinion. 
Toler declined assenting to any adjournment, and said if the Sheareses' counsel did not 
speak to the evidence, the Crown lawyer would waive their right to speak, and leave the 
matter at once to the Court. Then, after a sitting of 16 hours, with only twenty minutes' 
interval, Carleton decided on going on. And the trial actually proceeded eight hours 
longer— making i\oeniy-four in all ! It was under such circumstances that Curran 
made his speech for Henry Sheares, one of the greatest forensic efiforts ever made in 
any Court of law. — M. 

* Lord Carleton had been the intimate friend of the parents of the prisoners— (see the 
conclusion of the trial :) — a report even prevailed that he had been the guardian of the 
latter ; but this, it is presumed, was incorrect. — C. 

12 



266 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

were about to suffer, and all of tliem rendered haggard and 
spectral by tlie dim liglits that discovered tliem — the very presence 
of those midnight lights so associated in Irish minds with images 
of death — every thiug combined to inspire the beholders, who 
were now enfeebled by exhaustion, with a superstitious awe, and 
to make the objects, amidst which the advocate rose to perform 
the last offices to his sinking clients,* appear not so much a reality 
as the picture of a strained and disturbed imagination. 

Mr. Curran.f — "My lord, before I address you or the jury, I 
would wish to make one preliminary observation. It may be an 

* Mr. Curran was nominally counsel foi* only one of the prisoners: he had originally 
been the assigned counsel for both ; but before the trial commenced, at the request of 
John Sheares, Mr. Ponsonby was assigned one of his counsel in the room of Mr. Curran, 
in order to give the prisoners four counsel between them. The other two were Mr. Plun- 
ket and Mr. M'Nally. But as the charge and evidence against both the prisoners were 
the same, the counsel for one was virtually defending the other. — C. 

t That the reader may more fully comprehend the topics of Mr Curran's speech for the 
prisoners, the following summary of the leading articles of the evidence is inserted. The 
principal witness for the crown, John Warnford Armstrong, of the King's County militia, 
proved the overt-acts of high treason laid in the indictment. He swore that he was 
introduced by Mr. Byrne, a bookseller of Dublin, to the prisoners, who, supposing him 
(Armstrong) to be an United Irishman, freely communicated to him their treasonable 
designs. He had subsequent interviews with them at their own homes, the subjects of 
which he regularly reported to Colonel L'P^strange and Captain Clibboru of his own regi- 
ment, to Mr. Cooke of the Castle, and to Lord Castlereagh. Doubts having been enter- 
tained of the witness' belief in the existence of a Deity, a future state of rewards and 
punishments, Mr. Curran, who cross-examined him, pressed him upon those points. Cap- 
tain Armstrong swore that he had always professed that belief, and that he had never 
derided the obligation of an oath. 

He also swore that he had never said, " that if no other person could be found to cut 
off the head of the King of England, that he (the witness) would do it ;" and that he had 
never declared " that the works of Paine contained his creed." 

To these latter articles of Armstrong's, evidence was opposed, that of T. Dought, Esq., 
who swore that Armstrong, with whom he was very intimate, had frequently uttei-ed 
atheistical opinions; and, with his usual calmness of manner, had spoken of the future 
state of the soul of man as an " eternal sleep — annihilation — non-existence." 

K. Bride, Esq., barrister at law, swore that he had heard Armstrong speak slightingly 
of the obligation of an oath. 

C. R. Shervington, Esq., (Lieutenant, 41st regiment, and uncle to Armstrong) swore 
that Armstrong had said in his presence, that if there was not another executioner in 
the kingdom for George the Third, he would be one, and pique himself upon it ; and that 
upon another occasion Armsti'ong handed him Painc's Rights of Man, saying, *' Read this, 
it is my creed." 



TlilAL OF THE SHEAKESES. 267 

observation only — it may he a request. For myself I am indiifer- 
ent ; but I feel I am now unequal to tlie duty — I am sinking under 
the weight of it. We all know the character of the jury : the 
interval of their separation must be short, if it should be deemed 
necessary to separate them. I protest I have sunk under this trial. 
If I must go on, the Court must bear with me ; — the jury may also 
bear with me ; — I will go on until I sink ; — but, after a sitting of 
sixteen hours with only twenty minutes' interval, in these times, I 
should hope it would not be thought an obtrusive request, to hope 
for a few hours' interval for repose, or rather for recollection." 

Lord Carleton. — "What say you, Mr. Attorney-General?" 

Mr. Attorney-General Toler. — " My lords, I feel such pubHc 
inconvenience from adjourning cases of this kind, that I cannot 
consent. The counsel for the prisoners cannot be more exhausted 
than those for the prosecution. If they do not choose to speak to 
the evidence, we shall give up our right to speak, and leave the 
matter to the Court altogether. They have had two speeches 
already ; and leaving them unreplied to is a great concession." 

Lord Carleton. — " We would be glad to accommodate as much 
as possible. I am as much exhausted as any other person ; but 
we think it better to go on." 

Mr. Curran. — " Gentlemen of the jury : it seems that much has 
been conceded to us. God help us ! I do not know what has been 
conceded to me — if so insignificant a person may have extorted 
the remark. Perhaps it is a concession that I am allowed to rise 
in such a state of mind and body, of collapse and deprivation, as 
to feel but a little spark of indignation raised by the remark, that 
much has been conceded to the counsel for the prisoners ; much 
has been conceded to the prisoners ! Almighty and merciful God, 
who lookest down upon us, what are the times to which we are 
reserved, when Ave are told that much has been conceded to priso- 
ners who are put upon their trial at a moment like this — of more 
darkness and night of the human intellect than a darkness of the 
natural period of twenty-four hours ; that public convenience can- 



268 LIFE OF CDRPvAN. 

not spare a respite of a few hours to tliose who are accused for 
their Uves ; and that much has been conceded to the advocate, 
almost exhausted, in the poor remark which he has endeavoured 
to make upon it ! 

"My countrymen, I do pray you, by the awful duty which you 
owe your country — by that sacred duty which you owe your cha- 
racter (and I know how you feel it) I do obtest you, by the 
Almighty God, to have mercy upon my client — to save him, not 
from the consequences of his guilt, but from the baseness of his 
accusers, and the pressure of the treatment under which I am 
sinking. With what spirit did you leave your habitations this 
day ? In what state of mind and heart did you come here from 
your family ? With what sentiments did you leave your children, 
to do an act of great public importance ; to pledge yourselves at 
the throne of Eternal Justice, by the awful and solemn obligation of 
an oath, to do perfect, cool, impartial, and steady justice, between 
the accuser and the accused ? ^ Have you come abroad under the 
idea that public fury is clamorous for blood ; that you are put 
there under the mere formality or ceremonial of death, and ought 
to gratify that fury with the blood for which it seems to thirst ? 
If you are, I have known some of you,* more than one, or two, 

* One of the persons on the jury to whom the observation was particularly directed, 
was Sir John Ferns, with whom Mr. Curran had been long connected by habits of private 
friendship, and in whose society he had passed many of his happiest hours of convivial 
relaxation. 

The following little impromptu shows, in a striking point of contrast, the diffei'ent styles 
in which different occasions induced the writer to address the same individual: — 

TO SIR JOHN FERNS. 

WITH A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAIGXE. 

This bottle I've raised from the dust. 
Where for many a year it had lain, 
In hope tliat one day with the just 
It might rise and might sparkle again. 

And now, my dear Sir John, I send 
This type of good tidings to come, 
That the grave-digger's empire must end, 
And hi3 prisoners get loose from the tomb. 

J. P. 0. 



TEIAL OF THE SHEARESES. 

or three, in some of those situations, where the human heart speaks 
its honest sentiments. I think I ought to know you well ; you 
ouo-ht to know me ; and there are some of you who ought to lis- 
ten to what so obscure an individual may say, not altogether 
without some degree of personal confidence and respect. I will 
not solicit your attention, by paying the greatest compliment 
which man can pay to man ; but I hold you in regard as being 
worthy of it ; I will speak such language as I would not stoop to 
hold if I did not think you worthy of it. Gentlemen, I will not 
be afraid of beginning with what some may think I should avoid, 
the disastrous picture which you must have met upon your w^ay to 
this court. A more artful advocate might endeavour to play with 
you, in supposing you to possess a degree of pity and of feeling 
beyond that of any other human being. But I, gentlemen, am 
not afraid of beginning by warning you against those prejudices 
which all must possess ; by speaking strongly against them ; by 
striking upon the string, if not strong enough to snap it, I will 
wake it into vibration. Unless you make an exertion beyond the 
power almost of men to make, you are not fit to try this cause. 
You may preside at such an execution as the witness would extol 
himself for,"^ at the sentence flowing from a very short inquiry 
into reason. But you are not fit to discharge the awful trust of 
honest men coming into the box, indifterent as they stood 
unsworm, to pronounce a verdict of death and infamy, or of exis- 
tence and of honour. You have only the interval between this 

* Captain Armstrong, the witness in this case, having been questioned by Mr. Currau 
regarding the death of two countrymen, replied, " We were going up Blackmore Hill, 
under Sir James Duff; there was a party of rebels there. We met three men with green 
cockades : one we shot — another we hanged — and the third we flogged and made a guide 
of." Thomas Drought, Esq., (one of the witnesses for the prisoners) gave in evidence a 
conversation which he had held with Armstrong, respecting this transaction. " I asked 
him, (said Mr. Dought) how he could possibly reconcile it to himself to deprive those 
wretches of life, without even the form of a trial. He acknowledged that he did so. I 
asked him whether he expected any punishment for it ; and though he did not expect it 
from Government, yet that there was an all-powerful Being who would punish him. He 
said, ' You knew my opinion long ago upon this subject.'" This was the execution to 
which Mr. Curran above alluded — C. 



270 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

and pronouncing your verdict to reflect ; and the otlier interval, 
when you are resigning up your last breath, between your ver- 
dict and your grave, when you lament that you did not as you 
ought. 

" Do you think I want to flatter your passions ? I would scorn 
myself for it. I want to address your reason ; to call upon your 
conscience ; to remind you of your oaths, and the consequence of 
that verdict, Avhich upon the law and the fact, you must give 
between the accuser and the accused. Part of what I shall say 
must of necessity be addressed to the Court, for it is a matter of 
law. But upon this subject, every observation in point of law is 
so inseparably blended with the fact, that I cannot pretend to say 
that I can discharge your attention, gentlemen, even when I address 
the Court. On the contrary I shall the more desire your atten- 
tion, not so much that you may understand what I shall say, as 
what the Court shall say. 

" Gentlemen, this indictment is founded upon the statute 25 
Ed. III. The statute itself begins with a melancholy observation 
upon the proneness to deterioration, which has been found in all 
countries, unfortunately, to take place in their criminal law, par- 
ticularly in the law respecting High Treason. The statute begins 
with reciting, that, in the uncertainty of adjudications, it became 
diflScult to know what was treason, and what was not : and, to 
remove further difliculty, it professes to declare all species of 
ti'eason that should thereafter be so considered ; and, by thus regu- 
lating the law, to secure the state and the constitution, and the 
persons of those interested in the executive departments of the 
government, from the common acts of violence that might be used 
to their destruction. The three first clauses of the statute seem 
to have gone a great way indeed upon the subject ; because the 
object of the provisions was to protect the person ; and I beg of 
you to understand what I mean by person — I mean the natural 
person; I mean no figure of speech — not the monarch in the 
abstract, but the natural man ; the first clause was made without 



TRIAL OF THE SIIEAKESES. 271 

the smallest relation to tlie executive power, but solely to the 
natural body and person. The words are, 'When a man doth 
compass or imagine the death of the king, or of our lady his 
queen, or their eldest son and heir, and thereof be of sufficient 
proof attained of open deed by men of his condition, he shall be 
a traitor.' This, I say, relates only to the natural person of the 
king. The son and heir of the king is mentioned in the same 
manner; but he has no power, and therefore a compassing his 
death must mean the death of his natural person ; and so must it 
be in the case of the king. To conceive the purpose of destroying 
a common subject was once a felony of death ; and that was 
expressed in the same language, compassing and imagining the 
death of the subject. It was thought right to dismiss that severe 
rigour of the law in the case of the subject ; but it was thought 
right to continue it in the case of the king, in contradistinction to 
all the subjects within the realm. 

" The statute, after describing the persons, describes what shall 
be evidence of that high and abominable guilt ; it must appear by 
open deed — the intention of the guilty heart must be proved by 
evidence of the open deed committed towards the accomplishment 
of the design. Perhaps in the hurry of speaking — perhaps from 
the mistakes of reporters ; sometimes from one, and sometimes 
from the other, judges are too often made to say that such or such 
an overt act is, if proved to have been committed, ground upon 
which the jury must find the party guilty of the accusation. I 
must deny the position, not only in the reason of the thing, but I 
am fortified by the ablest writers upon the law of treason. In the 
reason of the thing ; because the design entertained, and the act 
done, are matters for the jury. AVhether a party compassed the 
king's death or not, is matter for the jury ; and, therefore, if a cer- 
tain fact be proved, it is nonsense to say that such a conclusion 
must follow; because a conclusion of law would then be pro- 
nounced by the jury, not by the court. I am warranted in this by 
the writers cited by Mr. Justice Foster ; and therefore, gentlemen, 



272 LIFE OF CUKRAjq". 

upon tlie first count in the indictment you are to decide a plain 
raatter of fact : 1st, Whether the prisoner did compass and ima- 
gine the death of the king ] or ^vhether there be any act proved, 
or apparent means taken, which he resorted to for the perpetration 
of that crime ? Upon this subject many observations have ah'eady 
been made before me. I will take the liberty of making one : I 
do not know whether it has been made before. Even in a case 
where the overt act stated has of its own nature gone to the per- 
son of the king, still it is left to the jury to decide whether it was 
done M'ith the criminal purpose alleged or not ? In Russel's case 
there was an overt act of the conspiracy to seize the guards ; 
natural consequence threatened from an act of gross violence so 
immediately approaching the king's person, might fairly be said to 
affect his life ; but still it was left to the jury to decide whether 
that was done for the purpose of compassing the king's death. I 
mention this, because I think it a strong answer to those kinds of 
expressions, which in bad times fall from the mouths of prosecu- 
tors, neither law nor poetry, but sometimes half metaphysical. 
Laws may be enacted in the spirit of sound policy, and supported 
by superior reason ; but when only half considered, and their pro- 
visions half enumerated, they become the plague of government, 
and the grave of principle. It is that kind of refinement and cant 
which overwhelmed the law of treason, and brought it to a meta- 
physical death ; the laws are made to pass through a contorted 
understanding, vibratory and confused ; and therefore, after a small 
interval from the first enaction of any law in Great Britain, the 
dreams of fancy get around, and the law is lost in the mass of 
absurd comment. Hence it was, that the statute gave its awful 
declarations to those glossarists, so that if any case should arise, 
apparently within the statute, they were not to indulge themselves 
in conjecture, but refer to the standard, and abide by the law as 
marked out for them. Therefore, I say, that the issue for the jury 
here is to decide, in the words of the statute, whether the priso- 
ners " did compass the death of the king," and whether they can 



TRIAL OF THE SHE^yaESES. 273 

say, upon their oaths, that there is any overt act proved in evi- 
dence, manifesting an intention of injury to the natural person of 
the king. 

" I know that the semblance of authority may be used to contra- 
dict me. If any man can reconcile himself to the miserable toil 
of poring over the records of guilt, he will find them marked, not 
in black, but in red, the blood of some unfortunate men, leaving 
the marks of folly, barbarity, and tyranny. But I am glad that 
men, who in some situations, appear not to have had the pulse of 
honest compassion, have made sober reflections in the h-our of poli- 
tical disgrace. Such has been the fate of Lord Coke ; who, in the 
triumph and insolence of power, pursued a conduct, which, in the 
hour of calm retreat he regretted in the language of sorrow and 
disappointment. He then held a language which I willingly 
repeat, ' that a conspiracy to levy war was no act of compassing 
the murder of the king.' There he spoke the language of law and 
good sense ; for a man shall not be charged with one crime, and 
convicted of another. It is a narrow and a cruel policy to make 
a conspiracy to levy war an act of compassing the king's death, 
because it is a separate and distinct offence ; because it is calling 
upon the honest affections of the heart, and creating those pathetical 
effusions which confound all distinct principles of law, a grievance 
not to be borne in a state where the laws ought to be certain. 

" This reasoning is founded upon the momentary supposition 
that the evidence is true, for you are to recollect the quarter from 
whence it comes : there has been an attempt, by precipitate con- 
fession, to transfer guilt to innocence, in order to escape the pun- 
ishment of the law. Here, gentlemen, there is evidence of levying 
war, which act, it is said, tends to the death of the king. That is 
a constructive treason, calculated as a trap for the loyalty of a jury, 
therefore you should set bounds to proceedings of that kind ; for 
it is an abuse of the law to make one class of offence, sufliciently 
punished already, evidence of another. Every court, and every 
jury, should set themselves against crimes, when they come to 



274 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

determine upon distinct and specified guilt ; but they are not to 
encourage a confusion of crimes by disregarding tlie distinction of 
punishments, nor to shov/ the eifusion of their loyalty by an efiusion 
of blood. 

" I cannot but say, that when cases of this kind have been under 
judgment in Westminster Hall, there was some kind of natural 
reason to excuse this confusion in the reports — the propriety of 
making the j^erson of the king secure : a war immediately adjoin- 
ing the precincts of the palace — a riot in London — might endanger 
the life of the king. But can the same law^ prevail in every part of 
the British empire ? It maj^ be an overt act of compassing the 
king's death to levy war in Great Britain ; but can it be so in 
Jamaica, in the Bahama Islands, or in Corsica, when it was annexed 
to the British empire ? Suppose at that time a man had been 
indicted there for compassing the king's death, and the evidence 
was that he intended to transfer the dominion of the island to the 
Genoese or the French ; what would you say, if you were told 
that was an act by which he intended to murder the king ? By 
seizing Corsica he was to murder the king ! How can there be 
any immediate attempt upon the king's life by such a proceeding? 
It is not possible, and therefore no such consequence can be pro- 
bably inferred ; and therefore I call upon you to listen to the court 
with respect ; but I also call upon you to listen to common sense, 
and to consider whether the conspiring to raise war in this coun- 
try be an overt act of compassing the king's death in this country.'" 
I will go further. If the statute of Edward HI. had been con- 
ceived to make a conspiracy to levy war an over act of compassing 



* This point was strongly urged by Mr. Ponsonby, counsel for John Sheares, and by Mr. 
Curran's colleague, Mr. Plunket ; but the Court decided that it was untenable. The 
Prime Serjeant observed upon it with more zeal than logical consistency : — " It was ^o?' 
this day reserved to broach the alarming and monstrous position. I trust in God that 
the authority of such opinions has not gone abroad ; and that the rebellion, which has 
for some time ravaged the country, has not been matured by such a doctrine." Lord 
Carleton, instead of countenancing so absurd an insinuation against the counsel, answered 
their arguments in the language cf compliment and respect. — C. 



TRIAL OF THE SIIE^IKESES. 275 

the king's death, it would be unnecessary to make it penal by any 
subsequent statute ; and yet subsequent statutes were enacted for 
that purpose, which I consider an unanswerable argument, that it 
was not considered as coming within the purview of the clause 
against compassing the king's death. Now, gentlemen, you will be 
pleased to consider what was the evidence brought forward to 
support the indictment. I do not think it necessary to exhaust 
your attention by stating at large the evidence given by Captain 
Armstrong. He gave an account which we shall have occasion to 
examine with regard to its credibility. He stated his introduction, 
first, to Mr. Henry Sheares, afterwards to his brother; and he 
stated a conversation, which you do not forget, so strange has it 
been! But, in the whole course of his evidence, so far from 
making any observation, or saying a word of connexion with the 
power at war with the king, he expressly said, that the insurrec- 
tion, by whomsoever prepared, or by what infatuation encouraged, 
was to be a home exertion, independent of any foreign interference, 
whatever. And, therefore, I am warranted in saying, that such an 
insurrection does not come within the first clause of the statute. 
It cannot come within the second, of adhering to the king's ene- 
mies, because that means his foreign enemies ; and here, so far 
from any intercourse with them, they were totally disre- 
garded. 

" Adhering to the king's enemies means co-operating with them, 
sending them provisions, or intelligence, or supplying them with 
arms. But I venture to say, that there has not been any one case, 
deciding that any act can be an adherence to a foreign enemy, 
which was not calculated for the advantage of that enemy. In the 
case of Jackson, Hensey, and Lord Preston, the parties had gone 
as far as they could in giving assistance. So it was in Quigley's. 
But, in addition to this, I must repeat, that it is utterly unneces- 
sary that the law should be otherwise, for levying war is of 
itself a crime; therefore it is unnecessary, by a strained con- 
struction, to say, that levying war, or conspiring to levy war, 



276 IJFE OF CUEKAN. 

should come witliin any other clause equally ^^enal, but not so 
descriptive. 

" But, gentlemen, suppose I am mistaken in both points of my 
argument — suppose the prisoners (if the evidence were true) did 
compass the king's death, and adhere to the king's enemies : what 
are you to found your verdict upon ? Upon your oaths : what are 
they to be founded upon ? Upon the oath of the witness : and 
what is that founded upon ? — upon this, and this only — that he 
does believe there is an eternal God, an intelligent supreme exist- 
ence, capable of inflicting eternal punishment for offences, or con- 
ferring eternal compensation upon man after he has passed the 
boundary of the grave. But where the witness believes that he is 
possessed of a perishing soul, and that there is nothing upon which 
punishment or reward can be exerted, he proceeds, regardless of 
the number of his offences, and undisturbed by the terrors of 
exhausted ftmcy, which might save you from the fear that your 
verdict is founded upon perjury. Suppose he imagines that the 
body is actuated by some kind of animal machinery — I know 
not in what language to describe his notions — suppose his 
opinion of the beautiful system framed by the almighty hand to 
be, that it is all folly and blindness compared to the manner in 
which he considers himself to have been created — or his abomi- 
nable heart conceives his ideas, or his tongue communicates his 
notions ; — suppose him, I say, to think so — what is perjury to 
him ? He needs no creed, if he thinks his miserable body can 
take eternal refuge in the grave, and the last puff of his nostrils 
can send his soul into annihilation ! He laughs at the idea of 
eternal justice, and tells you, that the grave, into which he sinks 
as a log, fonns an intrenchment against the throne of God and 
the vengeance of exasperated justice ! 

" Do you not feel, my fellow-countrymen, a sort of anticipated 
consolation in reflecting upon the religion which gave us comfort 
in our early days, enabled us. to sustain the stroke of affliction, and 
endeared us to one another ; and, when we see our friends sinking 



CHAKACTER OF ARMSTRONG. 2^77 

into the earth, fills us with the expectation that we rise again — 
that we but sleep for a while to wake for ever. But what kind of 
communion can you hold — what interchange expect — what confi- 
dence place in that abject slave — that condemned, despaired-of 
wretch, who acts under the idea that he is only the folly of a 
moment — that he cannot step beyond the threshold of the grave 
— that that, which is an object of terror to the best, and of hope 
to the confiding, is to him contempt or despair ? 

" Bear with me, my countrymen ; I feel my heart running away 
with me — the worst men only can be cool. What is the law of 
this country ? If the witness does not believe in God, or a future 
state, you cannot swear him. What swear him upon ? Is it upon 
the book or the leaf? You might as well swear hira by a bram- 
ble or a coin. The ceremony of kissing is only the external 
symbol by which man seals himself to the precept, and says, 
' May God so help me, as I swear the truth.' He is then attached 
to the Divinity upon the condition of telling the truth ; and he 
expects mercy from Heaven, as he performs his undertaking 
But the infidel ! By what can you catch liis soul ? or by what 
can you hold it ? You repulse him from giving evidence ; for he 
has no conscience — no hope to cheer him — no punishment to 
dread ! What is the evidence touching that unfortunate young 
man ? What said his own relation, Mr. Shervington ? He had 
talked to him freely — had known him long. What kind of cha- 
racter did he give of him ? Paine was his creed and his philoso- 
phy. He had drawn his maxims of politics from the vulgar and 
furious anarchy broached by Mr. Paine. His ideas of religion 
were adopted from the vulgar maxims of the same man — the 
scandal of inquiry — the blasphemer of his God as of his king. 
He bears testimony against himself, that he submitted to the 
undertakino' of readino- both his abominable tracts — that abomin- 
able abomination of all abominations, Paine's 'Age of Reason;' 
who professes to teach mankind, by acknowledging that he did 
not learn himself ! Why not swear the witness upon the vulgar 



278 LIFE OF CUEEAX. 

maxims of tliat base fellow, that wretched outlaw and fugitive 
from his country and his God ? Is it not lamentable to see a 
man labouring under an incurable disease, and fond of his own 
blotches ? ' Do you wish,' says he, ' to know my sentiments with 
regard to politics? I have learned them from Paine! I do not 
love a king ; and, if no other executioner could be found, I would 
myself plunge a dagger into the heart of George III., because he 
is a king. And because he is my king, I swear, by the sacred 
missal of Paine, I would think it a meritorious thing to plunge a 
dagger into his heart, or whom I had devoted a soul which Mr. 
Paine says I have not to lend.' Is this the casual effusion of a 
giddy young man, not considering the meaning of what he said ? 
If it were said among a parcel of boarding-school misses, where 
he might think he was giving a specimen of his courage, by nobly 
denying religion, there might be some excuse. There is a latitude 
assumed upon some such occasions. A little blasphemy and a 
little obscenity passes for wit in some companies. But recollect 
it was not to a little miss, whom he wished to astonish, that he 
mentioned these sentiments, but to a kinsman, a man of that boil- 
ing loyalty. I confess I did not approve of his conduct in the 
abstract, talking of running a man through the body;* but I 
admired the honest boldness of the soldier who expressed his 
indignation in such warm language. If Mr. Sher\dngton swore 
truly. Captain Armstrong must be a forsworn witness — it comes 
to that simple point. You cannot put it upon other ground. T 
put it to your good sense — I am not playing with your under- 
standings — I am putting foot to foot, and credit to credit. One or 
other of the two must be perjured : which of them is it ? If you 
disbelieve Captain Armstrong, can you. find a verdict of blood 
upon his evidence ? 

* This alludes to a part of Mr. Shervington's testimony. " I met Captain Clibborn, 
and told him I was sorry to find that John Armstrong was finding the secrets of men, in 
order to discover them. He told me it was a diflferent thing— that the Sheareses wanted 
to seduce him from his allegiance. 'Damn him!' said I, 'he should have run them 
through the body.' " 



AN APPKOYEE. 279 

" Gentlemen, I go further. I know your liorror of crimes — 
your warmth of loyalty. They are among the reasons why I 
respect and regard you. I ask you, then, will you reject such a 
witness ? or would you dismiss the friend you regarded, or the 
child you loved, upon the evidence of such a witness ? Suppose 
him to tell his own story. ' I went to your friend or your child — 
I addressed myself in the garb of friendship, in the smile of confi- 
dence, in order to betray it. I traduced you — spoke all the evil I 
could against you, to inflame him. I told him your father does 
not love you.' If he went to you, and told you this — that he 
inflamed your child, and abused you to your friend, and said, ' I 
come now to increase it, by the horror of superadded cruelty,' 
would you dismiss from your love or affection the child or the 
friend you loved for years ? You would not prejudge them. You 
would examine the consistency of the man's story ; you would 
listen to it with doubt, and receive it with hesitation. 

"Says Captain Armstrong, Byrne was my bookseller ; from him 
I bought my little study of blasphemy and obscenity, with which 
I amused myself. — ' Shall I introduce Mr. Sheares to you V — not 
saying which. AVhat was done then ? He thought it was not 
right till he saw Captain Clibborn. Has he stated any reason why 
he supposed Mr. Sheares had any wish at all to be introduced to 
him? any reason for supposing that Byrne's principles were of 
that kind ? or any reason why he imagined the intercourse was to 
lead to any thing improper ? It is most material that he says he 
never spoke to Byrne upon political subjects : therefore he knew 
nothing of Byrne's principles, nor Byrne of his. But the propo- 
sal was made ; and he was so alarmed, that he would not give an 
answer until he saw his captain. Is not this incredible ? There 
is one circumstance which made an impression upon my mind, that 
he assumed the part of a public informer; and, in the first instance, 
came to the field with pledgets and bandages. He was scarcely 
off" the table when a witness came to his credit. It is the first 
time that I saw a witness taking fright at his own credit, and 
sending up a person to justify his own character. 



280 LIFE OF CURKAX. 

" Considei" how he has fortified it. He told it all to Captain 
Clibborn ! He saw him every evening, when he returned, like a 
bee, with his thighs loaded with evidence. What is the defence ? 
that the witness is unworthy of belief. My clients say their lives 
are not to be touched by such a man: he is found to be an informer; 
he marks the victim. You know the world too well, not to know 
that every falsehood is reduced to a certain degree of malleability 
by an alloy of truth. Such stories as these are not pure and simple 
falsehoods. Look at your Oateses, your Bedloes, and Dugdales ! 
I am disposed to believe, shocking as it* is, that this witness had 
the heart, when he was surrounded by the little progeny of my 
client ; when he was sitting in the mansion in which he was hos- 
pitably entertained ; when he saw the old mother, supported by 
the piety of her son, and the children basking in the parental 
fondness of the father ; that he saw the scene, and smiled at it ; 
contemplated the havoc he was to make, consigning them to the 
storms of a miserable world, without having an anchorage in the 
kindness of a father !* Can such horror exist, and not waken 
the rooted vengeance of an eternal God ? But it cannot reach 
this man beyond the grave ; therefore I uphold him here. I can 
imagine it, gentlemen ; because when the mind becomes destitute 
of the principles of morality and religion, all within the miserable 
being is left a black and desolated waste, never cheered by the 
rays of tenderness and humanity; when the belief of eternal 
justice is gone from the soul of man, horror and execution may 
set up their abode ; I can believe that the witness (with what view 
I cannot say ; with what hope I cannot conjecture ; you may) did 
meditate the consigning of these two men to death, their children 
to beggary and reproach ; abusing the hospitality with which he 
was received, that he might afterwards come here and crown his 

* The writer of this is assured, by a gentleman now in Dublin, and who is free from 
any political zeal which could induce him to invent or distort a fact, that, upon his 
dining one day at the house of Henry Sheares, immediately before his arrest, he observed 
Armstrong, who was one of the guests, taking his entertainer's little children upon 
his knee, and, it was then thought, affectionately caressing them. — C. [Armstrong 
strongly denied this accusation. "J— M. 



Armstrong's evidence. 281 

work, having first obtained the little spark of truth, by which his 
mass of falsehood was to be put into animation. 

" I have talked of the inconsistency of the • story. Do you 
believe it, gentlemen ? The case of my client is, that the witness 
is perjured; and you are appealed to, in the name of that ever 
living God whom you revere, but whom he despiseth, to consider 
that there is something to save him from the baseness of such an 
accuser. 

" But I go back to the testimony. I may wander from it ; but 
it is my duty to stay with it. Says he, ' Byrne makes an impor- 
tant application : I was not accustomed to it ; I never spoke to 
him ; and yet he, with whom I had no connexion, introduces me 
to Sheares. This is a true brother.' You see, gentlemen, I state 
this truly : he never talked to Byrne about politics ; how could 
Byrne know his principles ? by inspiration I He was to know the 
edition of the man as he knew the edition of books. ' You may 
repose all confidence.' I ask not is this true ; but I say it can be 
nothing else than fahe. I do not ask you to say it is doubtful ; it 
is a case of blood ; of life or death. And you are to add to the 
terrors of a painful death the desolation of a family, overwhelming 
the aged with sorrow, and the young with infamy! Gentlemen, 
I should disdain to trifle with you; I am pinning your minds down 
to one point, to show you to demonstration that nothing can save 
your minds from the evidence of such perjury; not because you 
may think it false, but because it is impossible it can be true. I 
put into the scales of justice that execrable perjury; and I put 
into the other the life, the fame, the fortune, the children of my 
client. Let not the balance tremble as you hold it: and, as 
you hold it now, so may the balance of eternal justice be held 
for you. 

" But is it upon his inconsistency only I call upon you to reject 
him ? I call in aid the evidence of his own kinsman, Mr. Sher- 
vington, and Mr. Drought ; the evidence of Mr. Bride, and Mr. Gray- 
don. Before you can believe Armstrong, you must believe that all 



282 LIFE OF CIJERAN. 

tliese are perjured. What are his temptations to perjury ? the hope 
of bribery and reward : — and he did go up with his sheets of paper 
in his hand ; here is one : it speaks treason ; here is another : the 
accused grows paler ; here is a third : it opens another vein. Had 
Shervington any temptation of that kind ? No : let not the honest 
and genuine soldier lose the credit of it. He has paid a great 
compliment to the proud integrity of the King his master, when he 
did venture, at a time like this, to give e\adence, ' I would not 
have come for a hundred guineas!'^' I could not refuse the 
effusion of my heart, and avoid exclaiming, 'May the blessings 
of God pour upon you; and may you never want a hundred 
guineas !' 

" There is another circumstance. I think I saw it strike your 
attention, my lords. It was the horrid tale of the three peasants 
whom he met upon the road : they had no connexion with the 
rebels. If they had, they were open to a summary proceeding. He 
hangs up one, shoots a second, and administers torture to the body 
of the third in order to make him give evidence. Why, my lords, 
did you feel nothing stir within you ? Our adjudications have 
condemned the application of torture for the extraction of evidence. 
When a wild and furious assassin had made a deadly attempt upon 
a life of much public consequence, it w^as proposed to put him to 
the torture in order to discover his accomplices. I scarcely know 
whether to admire most the awful and impressive lesson given by 
Felton, or the doctrine stated by the judges of the land. ' No,' 
said he, ' put me not to the torture ; for, in the extravagance of my 
pain, I may be brought to accuse yourselves.' What say the 
judges ? — ' It is not allowable, by the law and constitution of Eng- 
land, to inflict torture upon any man, or to extract evidence under 
the coercion of personal sufferings.' Apply that to this case ; if 



* When Mr. Shervington was asked, upon his cross-examination by the counsel for the 
Crown, " if he had not kindly come forward, upon hearing that Captain Armstrong was 
to be a witness against the Sheareses," he answered, "No : I was summoned. I would 
not have appeared for a hundred guineas.''— C. 



WEITTEN EVIDENCE. 283 

the unfortunate man did himself dread the application of such an 
engine for the extraction of evidence, let it be an excuse for his 
degradation, that he sought to avoid the pain of body, by public 
infamy. But there is another observation more applicable : says 
Mr. Drought, 'Had you no feeling, or do you think you will escape 
future vengeance V ' Oh ! sir, I thought you knew my ideas too 
well to talk in that way. Merciful God ! do you think it is upon 
the e\adence of such a man that you ought to consign a fellow 
subject to death ? He who would hang up a miserable peasant to 
gratify caprice, could laugh at remonstrance, and say, ' you know 
my ideas of futurity.' If he thought so little of murdering a fellow 
creature without trial, and without ceremony, what kind of com- 
punction can he feel within himself when you are made the instru- 
ments of his savage barbarity ? He kills a miserable wretch, 
looking perhaps for bread for his children, and who falls unaccused 
and uncondemned. What compunction can he feel at sacrificing 
other victims, when he considers death as eternal sleep, and the 
darkness of annihilation ? These victims are at this moment led 
out to public execution ; he has marked them for the grave ; he 
will not bewail the object of his own work ; they are passing 
through the vale of death, while he is dozing over the expectancy 
of mortal annihilation. 

" Gentlemen, I am too weak to follow the line of observation I 
had made ; but I trust I am warranted in saying, that if 3^ou weigh 
the evidence, the balance will be in favour of the prisoners. 

" But there is another topic or two to which I must solicit your 
attention. If I had been stronger, in a common case I would not 
have said so much ; weak as I am, here I must say more. It may 
be said that the parol evidence may be put out of the case ; that, 
attribute the conduct of Armstrong to folly, or passion, or whatever 
else you please, you may safely repose upon the written evidence. 
This calls for an observation or two. As to Mr. Henry Sheares, 
that written evidence,* even if the hand-writing were fully proved, 

* This wi'itten evidence was an address to the United Irishmen, in the hand-writing of 
John Sheares.— C. 



284 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

does not apply to liim : I do cot say it was not admissible. The 
writings of Sidney, found in his closet, were read ; justly according 
to some ; but I do not wish to consider that now. But I say the 
evidence of Mr. Dwyer has not satisfactorily established the hand- 
writing of John. I do not say it is not proved to a certain extent, 
but it is proved in the very slightest manner that you ever saw 
paper proved ; it is barely evidence to go to you, and the witness 
might be mistaken. An unpublished writing cannot be an overt 
act of treason ; so it is laid down expressly by Hale and Foster. 
A number of cases have occurred, and decisions have been pro- 
nounced, asserting that writings are not overt acts, for want of 
publication ; but if they plainly relate to an overt act proved, they 
may be left to the jury for their consideration. But here it has no 
reference to the overt act laid ; it could not have been intended 
for publication until after the unfortunate event of revolution had 
taken place, and therefore it could not be designed to create 
insurrection. Gentlemen, I am not counsel for Mr. John Sheares, 
but I would be guilty of cruelty if I did not make another obser- 
vation. This might be an idle composition, or the translation of 
idle absurdity from the papers of another country ; the manner in 
which it was found leads me to think that the more probable. A 
writing designed for such an event as charged would hardly be 
left in a writing-box, unlocked, in a room near the hall door. The 
manner of its finding also shows two things ; that Henry Sheares 
knew nothing of it, for he had an opportunity of destroying it, as 
Alderman Alexander said he had ; and further, that he could not 
have imagined his brother had such a design ; and it is impossible, 
if the paper had been designed for such purposes, that it would 
not be communicated to him. 

" There is a point to which I will beseech the attention of your 
Lordships. I know your humanity, and it will not be applied 
merely because I am exhausted or fatigued. You have only one 
witness to any overt act of treason. There is no decision upon the 
point in this country.* Jackson's case was the first : Lord Clon- 

* This is not correct: it was the unanimous opinion of the three judges of the Court of 



EVIDENCE ON TREASON. 285 

mel made an allusion to tlie point ; but a jury ouglit not to find 
guilty upon the testimony of a single witness. It is the opinion of 
Foster, that by the common law, one witness, if believed, was 
sufficient. Lord Coke's opinion is that two were necessary. They 
are great names ; no ]nan looks upon the works of Foster with 
more veneration than myself, and I w^ould not compare him with 
the depreciated credit of Coke; I would rather leave Lord Coke 
to the character which Foster gives him ; that he was one of the 
ablest lawyers, independent of some particulars, that ever existed 
in England. In the wild extravagance, heat, and cruel reigns of 
the Tudors, such doctrines of treason had gone abroad as drenched 
the kingdom with blood. By the construction of crown lawyers 
and the shameful complaisance of juries, many sacrifices had been 
made, and therefore it was necessary to prune away these excesses 
by the stat. of Edward VI., and therefore there is every reason to 
imagine, from the history of the times, that Lord Coke was right in 
saying, that not by new statute, bnt by the common law^, confirmed 
and redeemed by declaratory acts, the trials were regulated. A 
law of Philip and Mary was afterwards enacted ; some think it was 
a repeal of the stat. of Edward VI., some think not. I mention 
this diversity of opinions with this view, that in this country, upon 
a new point of that kind, the weight of criminal prosecution will 
turn the scale in favour of the prisoner ; and that the court will be 
of opinion that the stat. 7 William III. did not enact any new 
thing unknown to the common law, but redeemed it from abuse. 
"What was the state of England ? The king had been declared to 
have abdicated the throne : prosecutions, temporising juries, and 
the arbitrary construction of judges, condemned to the scaffold 
those w^ho were to protect the Crown ; men who knew, that, after 
the destruction of the cottage, the palace was endangered. It was 
not, then, the enaction of anything new ; it was founded in the 
caution of the times, and derived from the maxims of the consti- 

King's Bench, before whom Jackson was tried, that in Ireland two witnesses were not 
necessary in cases of High Treason.— See Jaclison's Trial.— 0. [It is altered now.— M.] 



286 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

tution. I know tlie peevishness with which Burnet observed upon 
that statute. He is reprehended in a modest manner by Foster. 
But what says Blackstone, of great authority, of the clearest head 
and the profoundest reading ? He differs from Montesquieu, the 
French philosopher. 

" ' In cases of treason there is the accused's oath of allegiance 
to counterpoise the information of a single witness ; and that may, 
perhaps, be one reason why the law requires a double testimony 
to convict him : though the principal reason, undoubtedly, is to 
secure the subject from being sacrificed to fictitious conspiracies, 
which have been the engines of profligate and crafty politicians in 
all ages.' ^ 

" Gentlemen, I do not pretend to say that you are bound by an 
English act of parliament. You may condemn upon the testimony 
of a single witness. You, to be sure, are too proud to listen to the 
wisdom of an English law. Illustrious independents ! You may 
murder under the semblance of judicial forms, because you are 
proud of your blessed independence ! You pronounce that to be 
legally done which would be murder in England, because you are 
proud ! You may imbrue your hands in blood, because you are 
too proud to be bound by a foreign act of parliament : and when 
you are to look for what is to save you from the abuse of arbitrary 
power, you will not avail yourself of it, because it is a foreign act 
of parliament ! Is that the independence of an Irish jury ? Do I 
see the heart of any Englishman move when I say to him, ' Thou 
servile Briton, you cannot condemn upon the peijury of a single 
witness, because you are held in the tight waistcoat of the cogency 
of an act of parliament? If power seeks to make victims by 
judicial means, an act of parliament would save you from the 
perjury of abominable malice. Talk not of proud slavery to law, 
but lament that you are bound by the integrity and irresistible 
strength of right reason ; and, at the next step, bewail that the all- 

* 4 Blackstone's Commentaries, 858. 



TRIAL OF THE SHEAEESES. 287 

powerful Author of nature has bound himself in the illustrious 
servitude of his attributes, which prevent him thinking what is not 
true, or doing- what is not just.' Go, then, and enjoy your inde- 
pendence. At the other side of the water your verdict, upon the 
testimony of a single witness, would be murder. But here you 
can murder without reproach, because there is no act of parlia- 
ment to bind you to the ties of social life, and save the accused 
from the breath of a perjured informer. In England a jury could 
not pronounce a conviction upon the testimony of the purest man, 
if he stood alone ; and yet what comparison can that case bear 
with a blighted and marred informer, where every word is proved 
to be perjury, and every word turns back upon his soul ? 

" I am reasoning for your country and your children, to the 
hour of your dissolution : let me not reason in vain. I am not 
playing the advocate : you know I am not. I put this case to the 
bench : the stat. 7 W. 3 does not bind this country by its legisla- 
tive cogency ; and will you declare positively, and without doubt, 
that it is common law, or enacting a new one ? Will you say it 
has no weight to influence the conduct of a jury from the author- 
ity of a great and exalted nation ? the only nation in Europe where 
Liberty has seated herself. Do not imagine that the man who 
praises Liberty is singing an idle song : for a moment it may be 
the song of a bird in his cage : I know it may. But you are now 
standing upon an awful isthmus, a little neck of land, w^here 
Liberty has found a seat. Look about you — look at the state of 
the country — the tribunals that dire necessity has introduced. 
Look at this dawn of law, admitting the functions of a jury. I 
feel a comfort. Methinks I see the venerable forms of Holt and 
Hale looking down upon us, attesting its countenance. Is it your 
opinion that bloody verdicts are necessary — that blood enough 
has not been shed — that the bonds of society are not to be drawn 
close again, nor the scattered fragments of our strength bound 
together to make them of force ; but that they are to be left in 
that scattered state, in which every little child may break them to 



288 LIFE OF CUEEAN. 

pieces ? You will do more towards tranquillizing the country by 
a verdict of mercy. Guard yourselves against the sanguinary 
excesses of prejudice or revenge ; and, though you think there is 
a great call for public justice, let no unmerited victim fall. 

" Gentlemen, I have tired you. I durst not relax. The danger 
of my client is from the hectic of the moment, which you have 
fortitude, I trust, to withstand. In that belief, I leave him to you ; 
and, as you deal justice and mercy, so may you find it. And 1 
hope that the happy compensation of an honest discharge of your 
duty may not be deferred till a future existence — which this wit- 
ness [Armstrong] does not expect — but that you may speedily 
enjoy the benefits you will have conferred upon your country."* 

It was between seven and eight o'clock, on the morning of the 
13 th of July, when the jury retired to consider their verdict. 
After the deliberation of a few minutes, they returned it, finding 
both the prisoners guilty. As soon as the verdict was pronounced, 
the unfortunate brothers clasped each other in their arms. They 
w^ere brought up for judgment at three o'clock on the same day 
upon which occasion, they both addressed the court. 

Henry, who had a numerous family, was proceeding to request 
a short respite ; but, when he came to mention his wife and chil- 
dren, he was so overwhelmed with tears, that he found it impossi- 
ble to go on. His brother spoke with more firmness, and at more 
length. He began by strenuously disavowing the sanguinary 
intentions that had been imputed to him in consequence of the 
unpublished address to the insurgents which had been found in 
his handwriting, and produced in evidence against him. "The 
accusation," said he, " of which I speak, while I linger here yet a 
few minutes, is ' that of holding out to the people of Ireland a 



* The Prime-Sergeant replied for the Crown. Henry Shearea, who was then allowed to 
say a few words, strongly denied all knowledge of the paper found in his desk, and asked 
was it likely that, having the dearest sources of happiness around him, he should sacrifice 
them and himself by leaving such a document in an open writing- box? Lord Carleton 
chai-ged the jury, the two other judges concurring, and the verdict was returned after a 
deliberation of seventeen minutes.— M. 



289 

direction to give no quarter to the troops fighting for its defence.' 
I cannot onl}^ acquit my soul of such an intention, but I declare, 
in the presence of that God before whom I must shortly appear, 
that the favourite doctrine of my heart was — that no human 
being should siiffer death, hut where absolute necessity required itP 
After having spoken for a considerable time to the same 
eflect, he proceeded. " Now, my lords, 1 have no favour to ask 
of the Court. My country has decided that I am guilty; and 
the law says that I shall suffer. It sees that I am ready to 
suffer. But, my lords, I have a favour to request of the Court 
that does not relate to myself. I have a brother, whom I have 
ever loved dearer than myself; — but it is not from any affec- 
tion for him alone that I am induced to make the request; 
he is a man, and therefore, I hope prepared to die, if he stood 
as I do — though I do not stand unconnected ; but he stands more 
dearly connected. In short, my lords, to spare your feelings 
and my own, I do not pray that I should not die ; but that the 
husband, the father, the brother, and the son, all comprised in one 
person, holding these relations, dearer in life to him than any man 
I know ; for such a man I do not pray a pardon, for that is not 
in the power of the Court, but I pray a respite for such a time as 
the Court, in its humanity and discretion, shall think proper. 
You have heard, my lords, that his private affairs require arrange- 
ment. I have a further room for asking it. If immediately both 
of us be taken oft^, an aged and reverend mother, a dear sister, 
and the most affectionate wife that ever lived, and six children 
will be left without protection or provision of any kind. When I 
address myself to your lordships, it is with the knowledge you will 
have of all the sons of our aged mother being gone : two perished 
in the service of the king, one very recently. I only request, that, 
disposing of me with what swiftness either the public mind or 
justice requires, a respite may be given to my brother, that the 
family may acquire strength to bear it all. That is all I wish. I 
shall remember it to my last breath ; and I will offer up my 

13 



290 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

prayers for you to that Being who has endued us all with sensi- 
bility to feel. This is all I ask." 

To this aflecting appeal, Lord Carleton replied : " In the awful 
duty imposed on me, no man can be more sensibly affected than I 
am, because I knew the very valuable and respectable father and 
mother from whom you are both descended. I knew and revered 
their virtues. One of them, happily for himself, is now no more : 
the other, for whom I have the highest personal respect, probably, 
by the events of this day, may be hastened into futurity. It does 
not rest with us, after the conviction which has taken place, to 
hold out mercy — that is for another place ; and I am afraid, in 
the present situation ' of public affairs, it will be difficult to grant 
even that indulgence which you, John Sheares, so pathetically 
request for your brother. With respect to the object of your 
soliciting time for your brother, unfortunately it could be of no 
use ; because, by the attainder, he will forfeit all his property, real 
and personal : nothing to be settled will remain." 

His lordship then, after some preliminary observations, pro- 
nounced sentence of death upon the prisoners ; and, at the prayer 
of the attorney-general, directed that it should be executed on the 
succeeding day.* 

* A few hours before his execution, Henry Sheares wrote a letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir 
Jonah) Barrington, a facsimile of which is to be found in the latter's " Historic Anecdotes 
of the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland." Barrington says : " Ther& 
never was a more affecting picture of a feeling, agonized mind, at the approach of a 
violent death, than is this facsimile. Had but three hours been granted for the unhappy 
culprit's preparation for his fate, he would have been respited. Lord Clare was disposed 
to act with great humanity towards this amiable, but misguided man, having discovei-ed 
that he was utterly ignorant of the sanguinary proclamation, which was found in his secre- 
taire — he had never seen it." In Henry Sheares' letter, he besought Barrington to fly to 
the Lord Chancellor — " Ah, save a man whose fate will kill his family !" — to tell the Chan- 
cellor that he would pray for him for ever, " and that the Governme^it shall ever find inc 
tohat they wish " — that the inipers found in his oflSce he knew nothing of — that he had 
been duped, misled, deceived — that he never was for violence — that his whole happiness 
was centred in his family, "with them 1 will go to America, if the Government will allow 
me ; or that I will stay here, and he the most zealous friend they have" and would be 
under any conditions the Government might choose to impose on him, if they would but 
restore him to his family. This letter is dated 8 o'clock, but did not reach Barrington 



JOHN SHEAKES'S FAREWELL. 291 

The following is a copy of Mr. John Sheares' farewell letter to 
his family. It is addressed to his sister, to whom he had been 
most tenderly attached. It may not have much literary merit ; 
" but nature is there, which is the greatest beauty." 

" KiLMAiNHAM PRISON. — Wednesday night. 

" The troublesome scene of life is nearly closed ; and the hand 
that now traces these lines, in a short time will be no longer capa- 
ble of communicating to a beloved family the sentiments of his 
heart. 

" It is now eleven o'clock, and I have only time to address my 
beloved Julia in a short, eternal farewell. Thou sacred Power ! — 
whatever be thy name and nature — who has created us the frail 
and imperfect creatures that we are, hear the ardent prayer of one 
now on the eve of a most awful change. If thy Divine Providence 
can be affected by mortal supplication, hear and grant, I most 
humbly beseech thee, the last wishes of a heart that has ever 
adored thy greatness and thy goodness. Let peace and happiness 
once more visit the bosom of my beloved family. Let a mild 
grief succeed the miseries they have endured ; and, when an affec- 
tionate tear is generously shed over the dust of him who caused 
their misfortunes, let all their ensuing days glide on in union and 
domestic harmony. Enlighten my beloved brother : to him and 
his invaluable wife grant the undisturbed enjoyment of their 
mutual love ; and, as they advance, let their attachment increase. 
Let my Julia, ni}^ feeling, my too feeling Julia, experience that 

until 11 o'clock of the morning after the trial. He hastened to Lord Clare, and showed 
him the letter. It moved him ; and he exclaimed, naturally enough, " What a coward he 
is !" He said it was impossible to save John Sheares, and the doubt was how the Viceroy 
could draw the distinction between them. At last, anticipating that Henry would make 
any disclosures to save his life, he desired Barrington to go to the prison, see Henry 
Sheares, and put the question to him. " I lost no time," says Barrington, " but I found, 
on my arrival, that orders had been given, that nobody should be admitted without a 
written permission. 1 returned to the Castle— they were all in council. Cooke [the 
Secretary] was not in his office— I was delayed. At length the Secretary returned— gave 
me the order. I hastened to Newgate, and arrived at the very moment the executioner 
was holding up the head of my friend, saying : ' Here U the head of a traitor /' "— M. 



292 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

consolation which she has so often imparted to others ; let her soul 
repose at length in the consummation of all the wishes of her 
excellent heart ; let her taste that happiness her virtues have so 
well merited. For my other sisters provide those comforts their 
situation requires. To my mother — 0, Eternal Power ! what gift 
shall I wish for this matchless parent ? Restore her to that peace 
which I have unfortunately torn from her : let her forget me in 
the ceaseless affections of my sisters, and in their prosperity ; let 
her taste that happiness which is best suited to her affectionate 
heart ; and, when at length she is called home, let her find, in 
everlasting bliss, the due reAvard of a life of suffering virtue. 

"Adieu, my dear Julia! My light is just out. The approach 
of darkness is like that of death, since both alike require me to 
say farewell ! farewell, for ever ! 0, my dear family, farewell ! — 
Farewell, for ever ! 

"J. S." 

In the cemetery of the Church of St. Michan's, in Dublin, there 
are vaults for the reception of the dead, of which the atmosphere 
has the peculiar quality of protracting for many years the process 
of animal decay. It is not unusual to see there the coffins crum- 
bling away from around what they were intended for ever to con- 
ceal, and thus giving up once more to human view their contents, 
still pertinaciously resisting the influence of time. In this place 
the unfortunate brothers were deposited ;* and in this state of 
undesigned disinterment their remains may be seen to this day, 
the heads dissevered from the trunks, and "the hand that once 
traced those lines" not yet mouldered into dust.* 



* They were hanged and beheaded in the front of Newgate. Davis says of John 
Sheares : " He died (as did Henry, too, when he really came to his doom), placidly and 
well." On the other hand, Harrington records that " They came hand in hand to the 
scaffold : Henry died without firmness — the brother met his death with sufficient forti- 
tude."— M. 

t This reproach is out of date in 1855. In consequence of what Mr. W. H. Curran 
stated on this subject, in these pages and elsewhere, the mortal remains of the Sheareses 
were put out of public view, into substantial oak coffins. — M. 



203 



CHAPTER XII. 

Trials of M'Cann, Byrne, and Oliver Bond— Reynolds the informer— Lord Edward Fitz- 
gerald— His attainder— Mr. Curran's conduct upon the State Trials— Lord Kilwarden's 
friendship— Lines addressed by Mr. Currau to Lady Chai-lotte Rawdon— Theobald 
Wolfe Tone — His trial and death. 

The trial of the Sheareses was followed by that of John M'Cann 
of the 17th of July, lV98, of WiUiam Michael Byrne on the 20th, 
and Oliver Bond on the 23d of the same month. These were 
among the persons who had been at the head of the United Irishmen 
in the metropolis, and whom the Government, upon information 
communicated by one of their associates, had arrested in the pre- 
ceding March. Mr. Curran acted as leading counsel for them all ; 
but his speeches in the two former cases having been entirely 
suppressed,'^ the present account must be confined to his defence 
of Bond. 

[Oliver Bond was an eminent woollen-draper, residing in Bridge 
Street, Dublin, and is described by Davis as "a shrewd, kind man." 
He was indicted for hio-h treason, — that is for havino- administered 
unlawful oaths, on the 20th of May, 1798, to Thomas Reynolds 
and others, for conspiring to cause a rebellion to overthrow the 
King's government, for collecting money to furnish arms and 
ammunition for that purpose, for aiding and causing Reynolds to 
be a rebel Colonel in the county of Kildare, and for aiding and 
assisting the French to invade Ireland, &c. 

The principal witness, Thomas Reynolds, of Kilkea Castle, 
"swore hard" but many persons testified that he was not to be 
believed upon his oath. In fact, he was steeped to the eyes in 

* M'Cann and Byrne were convicted and executed. — C. 



294: LIFE OF CUERAN. 

crime. He stole jewels, and silks from his mother, — swindled a 
servant out of a bond of JBIVS, — and was accused, by bis own 
brotlier-iu-law, under circumstances of the strongest suspicion, of 
having poisoned his wife's mother, for the sake of robbing her of 
i£300. His infamy, as will be seen by the extracts from his evi- 
dence, was proven, out of his own lips.*] 

This was considered by the bar as the most powerful of his 
efforts upon the state trials of this year. Mi*. Curran has been 
represented, by the detractors of his reputation, as surrounded, 
during those trials, by an admiring populace, whose passions, 
instead of endeavouring to control, he was rather anxious to exas- 
perate, by presenting them with exaggerated pictures of the 
calamities of the times. It is not true that his audiences were of 
this description : one of the most honourable circumstances of his 
life is the fact that they were of a far different kind. He was 
encompassed, indeed, by men whose passions were sufficiently 
inilamed, but they were passions which it required no ordinary 
courage in the advocate to brave, and to despise. In his defence 
of Bond he was repeatedly interrupted, not by bursts of applause, 
but by violence and menace ; with what effect will appear in the 
course of the following passages. 

" Gentlemen, much pains has been taken to warm you, and then 
you are intreated to be cool ; when the fire has been kindled, it 
has been spoken to, and prayed to be extinguished. What is 
that?"t [Here Mr. Curran was again interrupted by the tumult 
of the auditors ; it was the third time that he had been obliged 

* Pieynolds's family did not like to rest under the imputation of his having been an 
informer and perjurer. His son, some years since, published an apology for his life. It 
failed to clear him. Reynolds was rewarded with two consular appointments, and, for 
some time was postmaster of Lisbon during the Peninsular war. In all he received 
£45,000 for swearing men's lives awaj"-, and one of his family still receives the pension 
settled on him, literally as the price of blood. — M. 

t This question was occasioned by a clash of arms among the military that thronged 
the court; some cf those who were nearest to the advocate appeared, from their looks 
and gestures, about to offer him personal violence, upon which, fixing his eye sternly on 
them, he exclaimed, " You m;iy assassinate, but you shall not intimidate me." — C. 



TRIALS OF m'cANN, BYRNE, AND BOND. 295 

to sit down : on rising he continued,] " I have very little, scarcely 
any hope of being able to discharge my duty to my unfortunate 
client, — perhaps most unfortunate in having me for his advocate. 
I know not whether to impute these inhuman interruptions to 
mere accident ; but I greatly fear they have been excited by pre- 
judice." 

[The Court said they would punish any person who dared to 
interrupt the counsel for the prisoner. " Pray, Mr. Curran, pro- 
ceed on stating your case ; we will take care, with the blessing of 
God, that you shall not be interrupted."] 

" You have been cautioned, gentlemen, against prejudice. I also 
urge the caution, and not with less sincerity : but what is the pre- 
judice against which I would have you armed ? I will tell you : 
it is that pre-occupation of mind that tries the accused before he 
is judicially heard; that draws those conclusions from passion 
,vhich should be founded on proof, and that sutlers the temper of 
'he mind to be dissolved and debased in the heat of the season. 
It is not against the senseless clamour of the crowd, feeling impa- 
tient that the idle discussion of facts delays the execution, that I 
warn you. No : you are too proud, too humane, to hasten the 
holiday of blood. It is not against any such disgraceful feelings 
that I warn you. I wish to recall your recollections to your own 
minds, to guard you against the prejudice of elevated and honest 
understanding, against the prejudice of your virtues. 

" It has been insinuated, and with artful applications to your 
feelings of national independence, that I have advanced, on a 
former occasion, the doctrine that you should be bound in your 
decisions by an English act of parliament, the statute of William 
III. Reject the unfounded accusation ; nor believe that I assail 
yo'ur independence, because I instruct your judgment and excite 
your justice. No : the statute of William III. does not bind you ; 
but it instructs you upon a point which before was enveloped in 
doubt. The morality and wisdom of Confucius, of Plato, of Socra- 
tes, or of Tully, does not bind you, but it may elevate and illu- 



296 LITE OF CURRAN. 

minate you ; and in tlie same way have British acts of parliament 
reclaimed you from barbarism. By the statute of AVilliam III. 
two witnesses are necessary, in cases of high treason, to a just and 
equal trial between the Sovereign and the subject; and Sir William 
Blackstone, one of the wisest and best authorities on the laws of 
England, states two witnesses to be but a necessary defence of the 
subject against the profligacy of ministers. In this opinion he 
fortifies himself with that of Baron Montesquieu, who says, that, 
where one witness is sufficient to decide between the subject and 
the state, the consequences are fatal to liberty; and a people so 
circumstanced cannot long maintain their independence. The 
oath of allegiance, which every subject is supposed to have taken, 
stands upon the part of the accused against the oath of his accuser; 
and RO principle can be more wise or just than that a third oath 
is necessary to turn the balance. Neither does this principle 
merely apply to the evidence of a common and impeached informer, 
such as you have heard this day, but to that of any one witness 
however high and respectable his character." 

The informer in question was Thomas Reynolds,* a name that 

* Reynolds was a silk-mercer of Dublin, who had taken a very active part in the con- 
spiracy. He was, in 1797, a colonel of the United Irishmen, afterwards treasurer and 
representative of a county, and finally a delegate for the Province of Leinster. As the 
time of the general insurrection approached, either remorse, or the hope of reward 
induced him to apprise the Government of the danger. Having previously settled his 
terms (500 guineas in hand, and personal indemnity) through Mr. Cope, a Dublin Mer- 
cliant, he gave information of an intended meeting of the Leinster delegates at Mr. 
Bond's house, upon which those persons, among whom were M'Cann and Byrne, were 
arrested in the month of March. The evidence of Reynolds, when connected with the 
papers that were seized, was so conclusive against the three who were tried, that no line 
of defence remained but to impeach his testimony. The following extracts from Mr. 
Curran's cross-examination of him will show the manner in which this was attempted. 

THOMAS REYNOLDS CROSS-EXAMINED BV MR. CURRAN, 

Q. You talked of yourself as a married man ; who was your wife ? 

A. Her name was Witherington. 

Q. Whose daughter ? 

A. The daughter of Catherine and William Witherington, of Grafton-street. 

Q. She has brothers and sisters ? 

A. One sister and two brothers. 



THE INFOKMEK. 297 

will be long- remembered in Ireland, and of which the celebrity has 
been extended to England, by some late discussions of his charac- 
ter in the British Parliament. This man had been the principal 



Q. How long are j^ou married ? 

A. I was married upon the 25th of March, 1794. 

Q. You were young when your father died? 

A. I was about sixteen years of age. 

Q. I think your mother carried on the business after his death ? 

A, She did. 

Q. Do you recollect at that time whether, upon any occasion, you were charged, per- 
haps erroneously, with having taken any of her money? 

A. No, sir, I do not recollect having heard any such cliarge. 

Q. You have sisters ? 

A. I have, and had sisters. 

Q. Some of them were living at the time of your father's death ? 

A. All that are now living were : there were more but they died. 

Q. Do you recollect having had any charge made of stealing trinkets or any thing 
valuable belonging to those sisters ? 

A. Never. I never was charged with taking any thing valuable belonging to any of my 
sisters. 

Q. Were you ever charged with having procured a skeleton key to open a lock belong- 
ing to your mother? 

A. I was, 

Q. I do not ask you whether the charge were true or not ; but you say there was a charge 
of that kind ? 

A. I say I was told my mother said so. 

Q. She did not believe it I suppose ? 

A. She did not say anything she did not believe. 

Q. And she said it ? 

A. I heard so ; and I have no reason to doubt it. 

Q. It was to open a drawer? 

A. No : it was to open an iron chest. 

Q. Where there were knives and forks kept ? 

A. It is not usual to keep such things there. I believe papers were kept there. Mr. 
Warren was my mother's partner : he kept her in ignorance, and did not supply her 
with money. 

Q. Do you not believe that your mother made this charge ? 

A. I believe she thought it at the time. She was a woman of truth : though, at times 
extremely passionate. I wish to say this : — You ask me whether I ever was accused of 
stealing money, or other valuables or trinkets, from my sisters : I was not ; but I was 
accused of stealing my mother's trinkets. I was then about sixteen years of age. 

Q. During the partnership between Mr. Warren and your mother, do you recollect any 
thing about a piece of lutstring? 

A. I do perfectly M'ell. 

Q. Was any charge made of stealing that? 

13* 



298 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

witness for the Crown upon the trial of M'Cann and Byrne ; and 
it is not improbable that a tenderness for his reputation had occa- 
sioned the suppression of Mr. Curran's defences in those cases. 

A. The very .same charge. I was charged with stealing the lutstring to give it to a 
girl, and that I also took my mother's jewels for the same purpose. 

Q. Then the charge consisted of two parts— the taking, and the manner in which they 
were given away ? 

A. If you will have it so. 

Q. I am not asking you whether you committed any facts of this kind or not, but 
whether the charges were made ? 

A. I tell you the charges were made; and I took the things. 

Q. Then you committed the theft ; and you were charged with the stealing? 

A. Both of the facts were true. 

Q. I did not ask you as to the skeleton key ? 

A. That charge was untrue. 

Q. It did not fit the lock? 

A. I had no such key : the charge was unfounded : the others were true. 

Q. How long is Mrs. Witherington, your mother-in-law, dead ? 

A. Twelve months, last April. 

Q. Where did she die ? 

A. In Ash-street : a part of the house was my ofiice, and connected with the house. 

Q. How long did she live there? 

A. About ten months. 

Q. Do you recollect what the good old lady died of? 

A. I do not know ; but heard it was a mortification in her bowels ; she was complaining 
badly for some 'days. 

Q. Had there been any medicine brought to her ? 

A. I recollect perfectly well, after she was ill, medicine was brought her. 

Q. By whom? 

A. By me. 

Q. Are you a physician ? 

A. No : but I will tell you. A Mr. Fitzgerald, a relation of our family, who had been 
an apothecary, and quitted business, left me a box of medicines, containing castor oil, 
cream of tartar, rhubarb, tartar emetic, and such things. I had been subject to a pain 
in my stomach, for which he gave me a quantity of powders in small papers, which I 
kept for use, and found great relief from : they saved my life. I asked Mrs. Reynolds for 
one of these papers to give Mrs. Witherington, and it was given to her. 

Q. It did not save her life? 



A. 


No, sir ; and I am sorry for it. 


Q. 


You paid her a sum 


of money? 


A. 


I did. 




Q. 


How much ? 




A. 


£300. 




Q. 


How long before her death ? 


A. 


About a fortnight or 


■ three weeks 


it in 


my books. 





I got her receipt, and made my clerk account for 



CHARACTEK OF RErNOLDS. 299 

The following description of him by Mr. Curran, in Bond's case, 
has been omitted in the common report : 

" I know that Reynolds has laboured to establish a connection 
between the prisoner and the meeting held at his house ; but how 
does he manao-e ? he brings forward asserted conversations with 
persons who cannot confront him — with M'Cann, whom he has 
sent to the grave, and with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whose prema- 
ture death leaves his guilt a matter upon which justice dares not 
to pronounce. He has never told you that he has spoken to any 
of these in the presence of the prisoner. Are you then prepared, 
in a case of life and death, of honor and of infamy, to credit a vile 
informer, the perjurer of an hundred oaths — a wretch whom pride, 
honour, or religion could not bind ? The forsaken prostitute of 
every vice calls upon you, with one breath, to blast the memory 
of the dead, and to blight the character of the living. Do you 
think Reynolds to be a villain ? It is true he dresses like a gen- 
tleman ; and the confident expression of his countenance, and the 
tones of his voice, savour strong of growing authority. He 
measures his value by the coffins of his victims ; and, in the field 
of evidence, appreciates his feme as the Indian warrior does in 
fight — by the number of scalps with which he can swell his tri- 
umphs. He calls upon you, by the solemn league of eternal 
justice, to accredit the purity of a conscience washed in his own 

Q. Were you ever charged with stealing that money ? 

A. I never heard that such a charge was made : none of the family ever spoke of it to 
my face. 

Q. Captain Witherington is the son of your mother-in-law ? 

A. He is. 

Q. Did he make that charge ? 

A. Not to myself. I will mention a circumstance ; she had a bond, and gave it to Mr. 
Jones to purchase a commission : he said the money could not be got ; and the £300 waa 
asked to purchase the commission ; and I always thought that her son, Edward Wither- 
ington got that money. She died suddenly, and had not made a will. 

Q. She died suddenly ? 

A. She died unexpectedly. 

Q. She died in forty-eight hours after taking the powder, which you gave to cure her ? 

A. She took the paper on Friday evening, and died on Sunday morning. 



300 LIFE OF CUKBAJSr. 

atrocities. He has promised and betrayed — lie has sworn and 
forsworn ; and, whether his soul shall go to heaven or to hell, he 
seems altogether indifferent, for he tells you that he has estab- 
lished an interest in both. He has told you that he has pledged 
himself to treason and to allegiance, and that both oaths has he 
contemned and broken."* At this time, Avhen reason is affrighted 
from her seat, and giddy prejudice takes the reins — when the 
wheels of society are set in conflagration by the rapidity of their 
own motion — at such a time does he call upon a jury to credit a 
testimony blasted by his own accusation. Vile, however, as this 
execrable informer must feel himself, history, alas ! holds out too 
much encouragement to his hopes ; for, however base, and however 
perjured, I recollect few instances, in cases between the subject 
and the crown, where informers have not cut keen and rode 



* The following is the list of Reynolds' oaths : 

Q. (By Mr. Curran). Can you just tott up the different oaths that you took upon either 
side? 

A. I will give the particulars. 

Q. No, you may mention the gross. 

A. No ; I will mention the particulars. I took an oath of secrecy in the county meet- 
ing — an oath to my captains, as colonel. After this I took an oath, it has been said — I do 
not deny it, nor do I say I took it, I was so alarmed ; but I would have taken one if 
required — when the United Irishmen were designing to kill me, I took an oath before a 
county member, that I had not betrayed the meeting at Bond's.* After this I took an 
oath of allegiance. 

Q. Had you ever taken an oath of allegiance before ? 

A. After this I took an oath before the privy council. I took two, at different times, 
upon giving information respecting these trials. I have taken three since, one upon each 
of the trials ; and, before I took any of them, I had taken the oath of allegiance. 

* Upon one occasion Reynolds saved himself from the vengeance of those whom he had betrayed, in'a way 
that was more creditable to his presence of mind. Before he had yet publicly declared his infidelity to the cause 
of the United Irishmen, as one of their leaders, Samuel Neilson, was passing at the hour of midnight through the 
streets of Dublin, he suddenly encountered Reynolds, standing alone and unarmed. Neilson, who was an athletic 
man, and armed, rushed upon him, and commanded him, upon pain of instant death, to be silent and to accom- 
pany him. Rej-nolds obeyed, and suffered himself to be dragged along through several dark and narrow lanes, 
till they arrived at an obscure and retired pass.ige in the liberties of Dublin. Here Neilson presented a pistol to 
his prisoner's breast — "What," said the indignant conspirator, "should I do to the vQlain who could insinuate 
himself into my confldenoe for the purpose of betraying me?"' Reynolds, in a firm tone, replied, "You should 
shoot hini through the heart." Neilson was so struck by this reply, that, though his suspicious were not removed, 
he changed his purpose, and putting up his pistpl, allo^ved the other to retire. This fact is given as related by 
an eminent Irish barrister, to whom it was coinnmnJc»ted b^ ono pf the parties, — C. 



PEKOKATION. 301 

awhile triumphant on public prejudice. I know of few instances 
wherein the edge of his testimony has not been fatal, or only- 
blunted by the extent of its execution, and retiring from the pub- 
lic view beneath an heap of its own carnage." 

Mr. Curran's parting words to the jury in this case have been 
also omitted in the printed collection of.his speeches. 

" You have been emphatically called upon to secure the state by 
a condemnation of the prisoner. I am less interested in the con- 
dition and political happiness of this country than you are, for 
probably I shall be a shorter while in it. I have then the greater 
claim on your attention and confidence, when I caution you against 
the greatest and most fatal revolution — that of the sceptre, into the 
hands of the informer. These are probably the last words I shall 
ever speak to you ; but these last are directed to your salvation, 
and that of your posterity, when they tell you that the reign of the 
informer is the suppression of the law. My old friends, I tell you, 
that, if you surrender yourselves to the mean and disgraceful 
instrumentality of your own condemnation, you will mark your- 
selves fit objects of martial law — you will give an attestation to 
the British minister that you are fit for, and have no expectation 
of any other, than martial law — and your liberties will be flown, 
never, never to return ! Your country will be desolated, or only 
become the gaol of the liWng ; until the informer, fatigued with 
slaughter, and gorged with blood, shall slumber over the sceptre 
of perjury. No pen shall be found to undertake the disgusting 
office of your historian ; and some future age shall ask — what 
became of Ireland ? Do you not see that the legal carnage which 
takes place day after day has already depraved the feelings of 
your wretched population, which seems impatient and clamorous 
for the amusement of an execution. It remains with you — in your 
determination it lies — whether that population shall be alone com- 
posed of four species of men — the informer to accuse, the jury to 
find guilty, the judge to condemn, and the prisoner to sufter. It 
regardeth not me what impressions your verdict shall make on the 



302 LIFE OF CURE AN, 

fate of this country ; but you it much regardeth. The observa- 
tions I have offered, the warning I have held forth, I bequeath you 
with all the solemnity of a dying bequest ; and oh ! may the 
acquittal of your accused fellow-citizen, who takes refuge in your 
verdict from the vampire who seeks to suck his blood, be a blessed 
and happy promise of speedy peace, confidence, and security, to 
this wretched, distracted, and self-devouring country !"* 

The preceding trials were immediately followed by an act of 
attainder against three of the conspirators who had previously 
perished, and whose property and consideration pointed them out 
as objects of this measure of posthumous severity. One of these 
was Lord Edward Fitzgerald,! a young nobleman, whose high 
connections and personal qualities excited the most lively sympathy 
for his unfortunate end. He was one of the leaders against whom 
Reynolds had given information ; and for some weeks had con- 
trived, by disguising and secreting himself, to elude the pursuit of 
the officers of justice. At length he was traced to an obscure 
house in the metropolis, and apprehended. He made a desperate 
resistance, and shortly after died in prison, from the wounds which 
he had received in the struggle. His widow and infant children 
petitioned against the bill of attainder, upon which occasion Mr. 
Curran was heard as their counsel at the bar of the House of 
Commons.]; 

[Lord Camden, the Viceroy, was vainly appealed to by Lord 
Edward's family, to take compassion on the widow and three 
babes, the eldest not four years old, and protect their estate for 



* Ml-. Bond was convicted, and sentenced to die : but, in consequence of a negociation 
entered into between the government and the state prisoners, of which one of the articles 
proposed by the latter was that his life should be spared, he was respited. He was shortly 
after carried off by an attack of apoplexy. — C. [Thomas Davis, giving credence to a 
charge made by Dr. Madden, in his " United Irishmen," says that there is much evidence 
to show that Bond was murdered. I confess that I do not see the motive of such a 
crime. — M.] 

t The other two were Messrs. Cornelius Grogan, and Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey.— C. 

t August 20th, 1793.— C. 



LOED EDWARD FITZGERALD. 303 

them from violence and plunder. The Viceroy would not, or 
could not, exercise humanity. On the 2'7th July, 1*798, Toler 
(afterwards Lord Norbury) introduced a bill into the Irish House 
of Commons, to attaint Lord Edward, and Messrs. Grogan and 
Harvey. All eftbrts against this vicarious trial of dead and uncon- 
victed men were fruitless. Arthur Moore (afterwards a judge), 
Jonah Barrington, and Plunket spoke, as members of Parliament, 
on the side of humanity. Reynolds, who had been implicitly 
trusted by Lord Edward, established the case against him. Still, 
it appeared (as it was) against law and justice to attaint an untried 
man — every accused person being presumed innocent until con- 
victed, on trial. Mr. Curran's appeal, though powerful, was 
hopeless.] 

His speech upon this question is imperfectly reported ; but even 
had it been more correctly given, the leading topics would be 
found of too abstract a nature to attract the general reader. It^ 
still contains, like almost all his arguments upon the most techni- 
cal subjects, passages of feeling and interest. At this period, he 
could never refrain, no matter what the occasion might be, from 
giving expression to the mingled sentiment of melanclioly and 
indignation with which the scenes that were passing before him 
had filled his mind. 

" Upon the previous and important question, namely, the guilt 
of Lord Edward (without the full proof of which, no punishment 
can be just), I have been asked by the committee if I have any 
defence to go into. I was confounded by the question, which I 
could not answer ; but, upon a very little reflection, I see, in that 
very confusion, the most conclusive proof of the injustice of the 
bill ; for, what can be more flagrantly unjust than to inquire into 
a fict, of the truth or falsehood of which no human being can 
have knowledge, save the informer who comes forward to assert 
it ? Sir, I now answer the question : / have no defensive evidence 
— it is impossible that I should. I have often of late gone to the 
dungeon of the captive^ but never have I gone to the grave of the 



304 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 

dead to receive instructions for his defence — nor^ in truth, have I 
ever before been at the trial of a dead man ;* I, therefore, offer uo 
evidence U23on this inquiry, against the perilous example of which 
I do protest, on behalf of the public, and against the cruelty and 
injustice of which I do protest in the name of the dead father, 
whose memory is sought to be dishonoured, and of his infant 
orphans, v/hose bread is sought to be taken away." 

The allusion in the following passage to the amiable character 
of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, will lose much of its force to those 
who have heard nothing of that unfortunate nobleman, except his 
fate. His private excellencies were so conspicuous, that the officer 
of the Crown [Toler], who moved for leave to bring in the bill of 
attainder, could not refrain from bearing ample testimony to 
them : " his political oflences he could not mention without grief; 
and, were it consistent with the principles of public justice, he 
would wish that the recording angel should let fall a tear, and 
wash them out for ever." 

" One topic more," said Mr. Curran, " you will permit me to 
add.f Every act of this sort ought to have a practical morality 

* Lord Brougham has more than once mentioned to me that, in the whole range of 
forensic eloquence with which he was acquainted, he remembered nothing more pathetic 
and touching than this passage which I have printed in Italics. The Bill of attainder 
passed despite of many strenuous efforts to interest George III. in favour of the widow 
and her orphans. Lord Edward's estate was then sold in Chancery, to satisfy a mortgage, 
and bought for £10,500 by Mr. W. Ogilvie, Lord Edward's stepfather, who cleared the 
property, and restored it to the widow. The poor woman (better known, perhaps, as 
Pamela, the reputed daughter of Madame de Genlis and Egalit6), quitting Ireland, went 
to live at Hamburg, where she married within two years of Lord Edward's death. The 
union was disunion. She died, at Paris, poor and miserable, in 1S31. The British 
Government promised to reverse the act of attainder, when the Irish " troubles " were 
over, but this merciful act of justice was not accomplished until 1S19. The reader may 
recollect Byron's graceful sonnet of thanks to George IV. (then Prince Regent), for this 
act.— M. 

t The gist and law of the case were thus put by Curran into a single sentence : " But 
if lie died without attainder, a fair trial was impossible, because a fair defence was impos- 
sible ; a direct punishment upon his person was impossible, because he could not feel it ; 
and a confiscation of his estate was equally impossible, because it was then no longer his, 
but was vested in his heir, to whom it belonged by a title as good as that by which it had 
ever belonged to him in his lifetime, namely, the known law of the country."— M. 



THE STATE TEIAXS. 305 

flowing from its principle. If loyalty and justice require that 
these infants should be deprived of bread, must it not be a viola- 
tion of that principle to give them food or shelter? Must not 
every loyal and just man wish to see them (in the words of the 
famous Golden Bull) always poor and necessitous, and for ever 
accompanied by the infamy of their father ; languishing in con- 
tinued indigence, and finding their punishment in living and their 
relief in dying ; and if the widowed mother should carry the 
orphan heir of her unfortunate husband to the gate of any man 
who might feel himself touched by the sad vicissitudes of human 
affairs — who might feel a compassionate reverence for the noble 
blood that flowed in his veins, nobler than the loyalty that first 
ennobled it ; that, like a rich stream, rose till it ran and hid its 
fountain — if remembering the many noble qualities of his unfor- 
tunate father, his heart melted over the calamities of the child ; 
if his bosom swelled, if his eyes overflowed, if his too precipitate 
hand was stretched out by his pity or his gratitude to the poor 
excommunicated sufferers, how could he justify the rebel tear, or 
the traitorous humanity ?" 

Mr. Curran's conduct upon these memorable causes exposed his 
character at the time to the foulest misrepresentation. The furious 
and the timid considered it an act of loyalty to brand as little 
better than a traitor the advocate who, in defending the accused, 
ventured to demand those legal ]3rivileges, and that fair, impartial 
hearing, to which, by the constitution of their country, they were 
entitled. He often received, as he entered the Court, anonymous 
letters threatening his life, if he should utter a syllable that might 
bring discredit upon the public measures of the day. Even in the 
House of Commons, he had, in the preceding year, to meet the 
charge of having forfeited the character of a "good subject" by 
his efforts for his cHents. " I am heavily censured," said he, " for 
having acted for them in the late prosecutions. I feel no shame 
at such a charge, except that of its being made at such a time as 



306 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

this ; that to defend the people should be held out as an imputation 
upon the King's counsel, when the people are prosecuted by the 
state. I think every counsel is the property of his fellow subjects. 
If, indeed, because I wore his Majesty's gown I had declined my 
duty, or had done it weakly or treacherously — if I had made that 
gown a mantle of hypocrisy, and had betrayed my client, or sacri- 
ficed him to any personal view — I might, perhaps, have been 
thought wiser by those who have blamed me, but I should have 
thought myself the basest villain upon earth." And, in a letter to 
Mr. Grattan, some years after, alluding to the same subject, he 
says: "But what were those attacks? Slanders provoked by a 
conduct of which my friends, as well as myself, had reason to be 
proud — slanders cast upon me by the very men whose want of 
vvdsdom or humanity threw upon me the necesssity of pursuing 
that conduct which provoked their vengeance and their misrepre- 
sentations. Thank God ! I did adopt and pursue it, under the 
pressure of uninterrupted attacks upon my character and fortune, 
and frequently at the hazard of my life. I trust, that while I have 
memory, that conduct will remain indelibly engraven upon it, 
because it will be there a record of the most valuable of all claims 
— a claim upon the gratitude of my own conscience." 

In resisting such attacks, or in braving any more aggravated 
measures of political hatred, Mr. Curran might have stood alone, 
and have looked with calmness to the result ; but gratefully to his 
own feelings, and honourably for others, he was not thus abandoned 
to his own protection. It was now that he was enabled to appre- 
ciate the full value of some of the intimacies of his youth, by 
finding in his own case how tenderly the claims of the ancient 
friend and companion were respected in a season of general alarm, 
distrust, and unnatural separation. Had it not been for the inter- 
ference of Lord Kilwarden, his character and repose would have 
been more frequently invaded ; but that virtuous person, whose 
mind was too pure to be sullied by party rancour, discountenanced 



LOED KILWAEDEN. 307 

every proposal to prosecute his friend ; and "never failed to check, 
as far as his authority could do so, any acts of malignity which 
might have been adopted without his knowledge.* 

It would be defrauding Lord Kilwarden of his greatest praise, 
to attribute this generous interposition to considerations of mere 
private friendship : it was only a part of that system of rare and 
manly toleration which adorned his whole public career. It is 

* As an example of the spirit of petty persecution to which he was exposed from per- 
sons in subordinate authority, it may be mentioned, that in the year 1798, when the mili- 
tary were billeted throughout the country, a party of seventeen soldiers, accompanied 
by their wives, or their profligate companions, and by many children, and evidently 
selected for the purpose of annoyance, were, without any previous notice, quartered on 
Mr. Cnrran's house ; but the moment that Lord Kilwarden heard of the circumstance, the 
nuisance was removed. There is another instance of similar interposition to which Mr. 
Curran alludes in his speech on behaff of Hevey, and of which the particulars are too 
honourable to Lord Kilwarden to be omitted. Mr. Curran, in that case, mentioned, that 
" a learned and respected brother barrister had a silver cup, and that Major Sandys (the 
keeper of the provost prison) having heard that it had for many years borne the inscrip- 
tion of ' Erin go brach,' or ' Ireland for ever,' considered this perseverance in guilt for 
such a length of years as a forfeiture of the delinquent vessel ; and that his poor friend 
was accordingly robbed of his cup." The gentleman in question was Mr. M'Nally. The 
manner of the robbery is characteristic of the times ; a Serjeant waited upon him, and 
delivered a verbal command from Major Sandys to surrender the cup; Mr. M'Nally 
refused, and commissioned the messenger to carry back such an answer as so daring a 
requisition suggested. The Serjeant, a decent, humane Englishman, and who felt an 
honest awkwardness at being employed on such a service, complied ; but respectfully 
remonstrated upon the imprudence of provoking Major Sandys. The consequences soon 
appeared : the serjeant returned with a body of soldiers, who paraded before Mr. M'Nally's 
door, and were under orders to proceed to extremilies if the cup was not delivered up. Upon 
Mr. M'Nally's acquainting Lord Kilwarden with the outrage, the latter burst into tears, 
and exclaiming, that "his own sideboard might be the next object of plunder, if such 
atrocious practices were not checked," lost not an instant in procuring a restitution of 
the property. The cup was accordingly sent back with the inscription erased, " And 
here," continued Mr. Curran, observing upon this transaction, " let me say, in my own 
defence, that this is the only occasion upon which I have ever mentioned it with the 
least appearance of lightness. I have often told the story in a way that it would not 
become me to tell it here : I have told it in the spirit of those feelings that were excited 
at seeing that one man could be sobe;- and humane, at a moment when so many thousands 
were drunk and barbarous ; and probably my statement was not stinted, by the recollec- 
tion that I held that person in peculiar respect and regard. But little does it signify 
whether acts of moderation and humanity are blazoned by gratitude, by flattery, or by 
friendship: they are recorded in the heart from which they sprung : and, in the hour of 
adverse vicissitude, if it should ever come, sweet is the odour of their memory, and pre- 
cious the balm of their consolation." — C. 



308 I-IFE OF CUKKxVN. 

often tlie fate of the most splendid characters, who mingle in poli- 
tical contentions, to be misunderstood and traduced, until the tur- 
bulence of the scene is past, or until the appeasing influence of the 
grave extorts an admission of their virtues. With Lord Kilwarden 
it was otherwise , so conspicuous were (if not his talents) his integ- 
rity and humanity, more admirable than the most exalted talents, 
that Ireland, in her most passionate moments, thought and spoke 
of him while he lived as she now does of his memory. His con- 
duct in the situation of Attorney-General would alone have entitled 
him to the lasting gratitude of his country. This trying and so 
frequently unpopular ofiice he filled during the most agitated period 
of her history. From the year 1*790 to 1798 it devolved upon him 
to conduct the state prosecutions, a task so difiicult to perform with- 
out reproach ; and, to his honour it is recorded, that he did not 
escape reproach — the reproach of an extreme respect for human 
life. He delighted in mercy ; and though, " like the noble tree, 
that is wounded itself, while it yields the balm," the indulgence of 
his nature exposed him to censure, he was still inflexibly merciful, 
screening the deluded, mitigating, where it could be done, the pun- 
ishment of the convicted, abstaining, in the most aggravated cases, 
from embittering the agonies of the criminal by oflicial invective, 
or by more inhuman levity. Such were the arts by which this 
excellent man collected arround him the applause of the good, 
and earned for his memory that epitaph which is never separated 
from an allusion to his fate — " the lamented Lord Kilwarden." 



As soon as the first interval of professional occupation permitted 
him, Mr. Curran seized the opportunity of passing over to England, 
and of seeking in a more tranquil scene, and in the consolations of 
private friendship, a temporary relief from the anguish with which 
he had witnessed the spectacle of turbulence and suffering at home. 
Upon the present occasion, his feelings of personal respect, and his 



CAKOLAN, THE IFaSII BAED. 309 

certainty of finding a generous sympathy for tlie calamities of their 
common country, directed his steps to the residence of the Ear] of 
Moira,^^ a nobleman for whose public and private virtues he had 
long entertained the most ardent veneration ; and it would here be 
depriving Mr. Curran's memory of one of the titles of honour, 
upon wdiich he always set the highest value, if it were not added, 
that, from his first acquaintance with his lordship, and with his 
accomplished mother, he continued ever after to enjoy their most 
perfect confidence and esteem. During this visit to them, he 
addressed to the latter the following little poem, in which the pre- 
vailing sentiment Avill be found to be the despondency that oppres- 
sed his own mind at the unfortunate period. 

LINES ADDRESSED TO LADY CUARLOTTE RAWDON, AND WRITTEN ON A BLANK 
LEAF OF CAROLAN's IRISH AIRS. DONNINGTON PARK, OCTOBER, 1798. 

And she said unto her people, Lo ! he is a wanderer and in sadness ; go 
therefore, and give him food, that he be not hungry, and wine, that he be 
comforted. And they gave him food and wine, and his heart was glad: 
and, when he wtis departing, he said unto her, I will give thee a book — it 
containeth the songs of the bards of Erin, of the bards of the days that are 
gone ! and these bards were prophets, and the griefs of the times to come 
were known unto them, and their hearts were sore troubled ; and their 
songs, yea, even their songs of joy, were full of heaviness ! This book will 
I give unto thee ; and it shall be a memorial of the favour thou showcdst 
unto me. And I will pray a prayer for thee, and it shall be heard — that 
thy days may be happy 5 and that, if sorrow should come unto thee, it may 
only be for a season, and that thou mayest find comfort even as I have 
done, so that thou mayest say, even as I have said, I did not take heed 
unto my words, when I said I was as* one without hope. Surely I am not 
a wanderer, neither am I in the land of strangers ! 

* The Earl of Moira here named served, in this country, as Aide-de-camp to Sir Henry- 
Clinton, and subsequently as Adjutant-General of the British forces. He was then Lord 
Rawdon, and, on his father's death, became Earl of Moira. He ruined his fortune by 
intimacy with George, Prince of Wales — was sent to India, as Governor-General to 
repair it — remained there nine years, and was made Marquis of Hastings in his absence. 
He returned to England in 1S22, and was made Governor of Malta in 1824, and died in 
1826. He was father of Lady Flora Hastings, so foully "done to death/ by lying- 
tongues," in Queen Victoria's Coujft, some years since. — M. 



310 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remember 
thee, Sion ! 

Carolan, thy happy love 

No jealous doubt, no pang can prove. 

Thy generous lord is kind as brave ; 

He loves the bard, and scorns the slave : 

And Charlotte deigns to hear thy lays, 

And pays thee not with thoughtless praise. 

With Howery wreaths the cup is crown'd : 

The frolic laugh, the dance goes round 

*• The hall of shells :" the merry throng 

Demand thy mirth, demand thy song. 

Here echoes wait to catch the strain, 

And sweetly give it back again. 

Then, happy bard ! awake thy fire — 

Awake the heart-string of thy lyre — 

Invoke thy Muse. Thy Muse appears ; 

But robed in sorrow, bathed in tears. 

No blithesome tale, alas ! she tells — 

No glories of the '•' hall of shells "— 

No joy she whispers to thy lays — 

No note of love, no note of praise ; — 

But to thy boding fancy shows 

The forms of Erin's future woes, 

The wayward fates, that crown the slave, 

That mar the wise, that crush the brave. 

The tyrant's frown, the patriot's doom. 

The mother's tears, the warrior's tomb. 

In vain would mirth inspire thy song : 

Grief heaves thy breast, and claims thy tongue : 

Thy strain from joy to sadness turns : 

Thy bard would smile — the prophet mourns.* 

Mr. Curran had scarcely returned to Ireland to resume his public 
duties, when it was his fate to be engaged, while performing them, 
in another scene, wdiich bore a striking resemblance to the melan- 

* These vei'ses were written in answer to a question from Lady Rawdon, upon the 
cause of the mixtui-e of liveliness and melancholy which distinguishes the compositions 
of Carolan.— C. 



THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. 311 

choly catastrophe in Jackson's case. The circumstances alluded 
to were those which followed the trial and conviction of Theobald 
Wolfe Tone. 

Mr. Tone was one of the most active promoters of the designs of 
the United Irishmen ; and, according to the concurring testimony 
of all his cotemporaries, was the ablest man who had given his 
support to that cause. He was originally a member of the Irish 
bar, where his talents could not have failed to have raised him to 
distinction ; but the principles of the French Kevolution, and the 
hope of successfully applying them to change the condition of his 
own country, soon diverted his ardent mind from legal pursuits, 
and involved him in that political career which subsequently occu- 
pied his life. In this new field he, at a very early period, became 
conspicuous for his zeal in supporting the claims of the Roman 
Catholics, who appointed him a secretary to their committee, and 
voted him a sum of money as the reward of his exertions. He was 
also one of the original projectors of the plan of combining the 
popular strength and sentiment, which was afterwards matured into 
the Irish Union. That association existed some years before its 
object was to effect a revolution ; but it has already been shown, 
that, as early as 1791, Mr. Tone recommended precisely the same 
views which the future leaders vainly attempted to accomplish. In 
1794, when Jackson arrived in Ireland upon his secret mission 
from the French Government, he soon discovered that Mr. Tone 
was one of the persons the most likely to approve and assist his 
designs. He accordingly communicated them to him, and was not 
disappointed in his expectation. Mr. Tone so cordially embraced 
the proposal of an invasion of Ireland by the French, that, had not 
the urgency of his private affairs prevented, he would have passed 
over to France, in order to confer in person with the French 
authorities upon the subject. Some of the discussions upon this 
topic took place in the prison of Newgate, in the presence of 
Cockayne and Mr. Hamilton Rowan, the latter of whom was at 
that time under sentence of confinement for the publication of a 



312 LIFE OF CURE AN. 

libel. Jackson being- shortly after arrested upon the information 
of Cockayne, Mr. Rowan, who was aware that the evidence of that 
witness would equally involve himself, effected his escape, and fled 
to France. Mr. Tone remained. Whatever his more private com- 
munications might have been with Jackson, upon whose fidelity 
he relied, he conceived that the amount of Cockayne's testimony 
could convict him of no higher an oftence than misprision of 
treason. Considerable exertions were 'also used by his private 
friends to dissuade the Government from a prosecution ; and, in 
consequence, he was not arrested. The evidence upon Jackson's 
trial, however, having publicly shown that some degree of treason- 
able connexion had subsisted between him and Mr. Tone, the latter 
was advised, if he consulted his safety, to withdraw from Ireland. 
He accordingly, in the summer of 1795, transported himself and 
his family to America.'^ Here he did not remain many months. 
He tendered his services to the French Directory, and having met 
with all the encouragement he could desire, he procured a passage 
to France, where he arrived in the beginning of the year 1Y96. 
He was most favourably received, and appointed to a commission 
in the French army. His eftbrts to persuade the Directory to 
send an armament to Ireland have been previously mentioned. 
The first expedition having failed, a second attempt was made in 
the autumn of 1*798. This was equally unsuccessful; and Mr. 
Tone, who was on board the Hoche French line-of-battle-ship, one 
of the vessels captured by Sir J. B. Warren's squadron ofi" the Irish 
coast, fell into the hands of the English Government, and was 
brouglit to trial by court-martial in Dublin, on the 10th of Novem- 
ber, 1798.1 

* The vessel, in which he was a passenger, no sooner arrived in sight of an American 
port, than she was boarded by a boat from a British man of war. Mr. Tone was (among 
others) impressed to serve as a sailor in his majesty's navy ; but, after considerable 
difiBculties, his own remonstrances, and the solicitations of Mrs. Tone, obtained his 
release. — C. 

t Tliere is no report, in Thomas Davis's excellent edition of Curran's speeches, of his 
defence of Wolfe Tone. — M. 



tone's trial. 313 

Mr. Tone appeared in court in tlie dress of a French officer. 
When called on for his defence, he admitted the facts of which he 
was accused;^ but pleaded (of course ineftectually) his French 
commission. He then proceeded to read a paper which he had 
drawn up in justification of his conduct, from the conclusion of 
which it was evident that he had entertained no hope that any 
defence could avail him. " I have little more to say. Success is 
all in this life ; and, unfavoured of her, virtue becomes vicious in 
the ephemeral estimation of those who attach every merit to pros- 
perity. In the glorious race of patriotism, I have pursued the 
path chalked out by Washington in America, and Kosciusko in 
Poland. Like the latter, I have failed to emancipate my country; 
and, unlike them both, I have forfeited my life. I have done my 
duty, and I have no doubt the Court will do theirs. I have only 
to add, that a man who has thought and acted as I have done, 
should be armed against the fear of death. I conceive," continued 
he, " that I stand here in the same light with our emigres ; and, 
if the indulgence lay within the power of the court, I would only 
request what French magnanimity allowed to Charette and to the 
Count de Sombreuil — the death of a soldier, and to be shot by a 
file of grenadiers. This is the only favour I have to ask; and I 
trust that men, susceptible of the nice feelings of a soldier's honour, 
will not refuse the request. It is not from any personal feeling 
that I make this request, but from a respect to the uniform which 
I wear, and to the brave army in which I have fought." 

This final request was not granted. It was directed by the 
Government that he should be executed in the ordinary form, and 
in the most public manner ; but this the prisoner took the resolu- 
tion of preventing, by an act, which, in his case, shows the uncertain 
security of any speculative determinations respecting suicide, 
against the pressure of the actual calamity, or of the many 

^ When asked what he would plead, he exclaimed, " Guilty ; for I have never, during 
my life, stooped to a prevarication."— C. 

14 



314 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 

other motives which impel a man to raise his hand against him- 
self. 

Upon the evening before the Hoche sailed, from Brest, the sub- 
ject of suicide was fully discussed among the Irish, who formed a 
part of tlie expedition. They felt confident of success, should the 
French troops debark in safety upon the coast of Ireland; but they 
were equally certain, that, if captured at sea, they would all be 
condemned, and executed. Upon this a question arose, whether 
in the latter event, they should suffer themselves to be put to 
death according to the sentence and forms of law. Mr. Tone 
maintained that they ought ; and, with his usual eloquence and 
animation, delivered his decided opinion, that, in no point of view 
in w^hich he had ever considered suicide, could he hold it to be 
justifiable. It is supposed, that, in his own particular instance, 
he did not at this time anticipate an ignominious mode of death ; 
but that he expected, in case of capture and condemnation, to be 
allowed the military privilege which he afterwards so earnestly 
claimed.f Disappointed in this hope, he now committed the act 
which he had so lately reprobated. He was induced to do so 
either by a natural impulse of personal pride, of which he had 
not previously contemplated the powerful influence, or (as is con- 
jectured by those who best knew him) out of consideration for 
the army of which he w^as a member, and for whose honour, in 
his estimation, no sacrifice could be too great. 

Mr. Tone's execution w^as fixed for Monday, the 12th of Novem- 



t The gentleman who has communicated the above circumstances was present at the 
conversation. Independent of the moral arguments adduced against suicide, it was sug- 
gested by one of the company, that from political considerations, it would be better not 
to relieve, by any act of self-murder, the Irish government from the discredit in which 
numerous executions would involve it — an idea which, he says, Mr. Tone warmly 
approved. He adds, that when it appeared that the Hoche was likely to be captured, a 
boat was despatched to her from the Biche (a small, fast sailing vessel, which afterwards 
escaped into Brest) in order to bring off all the Irish on board ; but that Mr. Tone could 
not be persuaded to avail himself of the opportunity. — C. [Wolfe Tone's own Memoirs 
tell every thing about him.— M.] 



315 

ber. At an early hour upon that morning the sentinel who 
watched in his room having approached to awaken him, found 
him with his throat cut across, and apparently expiring. A sur- 
geon was immediately called, who, on examining the wound, pro- 
nounced it not mortal, though extremely dangerous ; to which Mr. 
Tone faintly answered, " I find, then, I am but a bad anatomist." 
The wound was dressed, with the design of prolonging life lill the 
hour of one o'clock, the time appointed for his execution. In the 
interval a motion was made in the court of King's Bench by Mr. 
Curran, on an affidavit of Mr. Tone's father, stating that his son 
had been brought before a bench of officers, calling itself a court- 
martial, and by them sentenced to death. " I do not pretend to 
say," observed Mr. Curran, " that Mr. Tone is not guilty of the 
charges of which he was accused; I presume the officers were 
honourable men ; but it is stated in the affidavit, as a solemn fact, 
that Mr. Tone had no commission under his majesty, and therefore 
no court-martial could have cognizance of any crime imputed to 
him, Avhile the court of King's Bench sat in the capacity of the 
great criminal court of the land. In times wdien war was raging, 
when man was opposed to man in the field, courts martial might 
be endured ; but every law authority is with me while I stand 
upon this sacred and immutable principle of the constitution — that 
martial laiu and civil law a,re incompatible ; and that the former 
must cease with the existence of the latter. This is not the time 
for arguing this momentous question. My client must appear in 
this court. He is cast for death this day. He may be ordered for 
execution while I address you, I call on the court to support the 
law. I move for a habeas corpus to be directed to the provost- 
marshal of the barracks of Dublin, and Major Sands to bring up 
the body of Mr. Tone." 

Chief Justice.* — " Have a writ instantly prepared." 

* Lord Kilwarden.— 0. 



Oib LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

Mr. Currau. — "My client may die while this '^vTit is pre- 
paring." 

Chief Justice. — " Mr. Sheriff, proceed to the barracks, and 
acquaint the provost-marshal that a writ is preparing to suspend 
Mr. Tone's execution ; and see that he be not executed^ 

The Court awaited, in a state of the utmost agitation, the return 
of the Sheriff. 

Mr. Sheriff. — " My lords, I have been at the barracks, in pursu- 
ance of your order. The provost-marshal says he must obey Major 
Sands. Major Sands says he must obey Lord Cornwallis." 

Mr. Curran. — " Mr. Tone's father, my lords, returns, after serving 
the habeas corpus : he says General Craig will not obey it." 

Chief Justice. — " Mr. Sheriff, take the body of Tone into your 
custody. Take the provost-marshal and Major Sands into custody : 
and show the order of this court to General Craig." 

Mr. Sheriff, who was understood to have been refused admittance 
at the barracks, returns. — "I have been at the barracks. Mr. 
Tone, having cut his throat last night, is not in a condition to be 
removed. As to the second part of your order, I could not meet 
the parties." 

A French emip-rant suro-eon, whom General Craig; had sent 
along with the Sheriff, was sworn. 

Surgeon. — " I was sent to attend Mr. Tone this morning at four 
o'clock. His windpipe was divided. I took instant measures to 
secure his life, by closing the wound. There is no knowing, for 
four days, w^hether it will be mortal. His head is now kept in one 
position. A sentinel is over him, to prevent his speaking. His 
removal would kill him." 

Mr. Curran applied for further surgical aid, and for the admis- 
sion of Mr. Tone's friends to him. Refused. 

Chief Justice. — " Let a rule be made for suspending the execu- 
tion of Theobald Wolfe Tone ; and let it be served on the proper 
person." 



DEATH OF TONE. 317 

Tlie prisoner lingered until tlie 19tli day of November, when he 
expired, after having endured the most excruciating pain;^ and 
with his fate shall close the account of the part which Mr. Curran 
bore in the public transactions of this calamitous year. 



* Mr. Tone had reached only his thirty-fourth year. His father was an eminent coach- 
maker in Dublin : he had sixteen children (thirteen sons and three daughters), of whom 
only five attained the age of maturity, and whose fates afford a singular instance of the 
wanderings and calamities of a single family. Theobald died as before related. Matthew 
was executed the same year, in Dublin barracks, for high treason : it is said that no more 
than five persons were present at the execution. William was killed in India, a major in 
Holkar's service. Arthur accompanied his brother Theobald to America ; and was subse- 
quently, at the early age of eighteen, appointed to the command of a frigate in the ser- 
vice of the Dutch republic : he is supposed to have perished at sea, as no account was 
ever after received of him. Mary was married to a foreign merchant, and died at St. 
Domingo. Their aged mother survives, and now [1S19] resides in Dublin. After the death 
of Mr. Wolfe Tone, his widow and infant children were protected by the French republic ; 
and, on the motion of Lucien Bonaparte, a pension granted for their support.— C. 



318 LIFE OF CrRRAN. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Efifects of the Legislative Union upon Mr. Curran's mind — Speech in Tandy's case — Speech 
in behalf of Hevey— Allusion in the latter to Mr. Godwin— Mutual friendship of Mr." 
Currau and Mr. Godwin. 

Mr. Curran's history,, during the eight remaining years of his 
forensic Hfe, consists almost entirely of the causes of interest in 
which he was engaged. He was no longer in Parliament when 
the question of the Union was agitated and carried. This measure, 
Avhich he had always deprecated as ruinous and disgraceful to his 
country, completed those feelings of political despondency to which 
the scenes of the rebellion, and the uniform failure of every strug- 
gle to avert them, had been habituating his mind.* With the 
Union, which he considered as "the extinction of the Irish name," 
all his long cherished hopes for Ireland vanished for ever. From 
this last shock to his affections and his pride he never recovered. 
It was ever after present to his imagination, casting a gloom over 
all his political speculations, and interfering with the repose of his 
private hours. This sensibility to what so many others bore with 
complacency as a mere national disaster, will, perhaps, be ridiculed 
as affected, or doubted as incredible; but those who best knew 



* Years before, while in Parliament, he had thus predicted the results of an Union: — 
"It is very easy to conceive, that in case of such an event the inevitable consequence 
would be, an union with Great Britain. And if any one desires to know what that 
would be, I will tell him : It would he the emigration of every man of consequence from. 
Ireland; it tcould be the participation of British taxes xcithout British trade; it 
woidd he the extinction of the Irish name as a people. We should hecome a wretched 
colony, perhaps leased out to a company ofJetDS, as was formerly in co7item2)lation, 
and governed hy a few tax-gatherers and excisemen, unless jjossiitly you may add fif- 
teen or twenty couple of Irish m.emhers, who might he found every session sleeping in 
their collars under the manger of the British Minister.''^ — M. 



JAMES NAPPER TANDY. 319 

him can attest the sincerity and extent of his affliction. It was so 
deep, that he began seriously to meditate a final departure from 
Ireland/*' At one time he looked towards America, at another to 
the Enoflish bar; but the better influence of duties and old attach- 
ments prevailed over these suggestions of melancholy, and he 
remained to conclude his fortunes on the scene where they had 
commenced. 

CASE OF JAMES NAPPER TANDY. 

One of Mr. Curran's speeches, which has been omitted in all 
the editions of the published collection,! was that in behalf of 
Mr. James JSTapper Tandy. Mr. Tandy had been a conspicuous 
member of the early societies of United Irishmen. In 1795, he 
was indicted for High Treason, and fled to the Continent, where 
he became an officer in the French service. He was one of the 
persons excluded from the benefit of the bill of general amnesty, 
which was passed after the suppression of the rebellion of 17 9 8. 
The other particulars of his case may be sufficiently collected from 
Mr. Curran's statement. The trial took place in the King's Bench, 
before Lord Kilwarden and the other jndges of that Court, on the 
19th of May, ISOO.J 

Mr. Curran (for the prisoner). — " My lords, and you, gentlemen 

* "That country (as he observes in one of his latest speeches at the bar) of which I 
haA'e so often abandoned all hope, and which I have been so often determined to quit for 
ever — 

Sa?pe vale dicto, multa sum deinde locutus, 
Et quasi discedens oscula summa dabam, 
Indulgens animo, pes tardus erat." 

Speech in Judge Johnsoii's Case. 
t It is to be found in Davis's edition. — M. 

X Napper Tandy had been a merchant in Dublin, of good family, and became an active 
member of the Corporation fully twenty-five years before 179S. In the struggle for Irish 
Independence, he commanded the Artillery of the Volunteers, and had his guns cast with 

" Free Trade or else " upon them. He led the Radical party in the Corporation, in 

1790, and was much mixed up with the United Irishmen from 1791. He fled to America, 
from prosecution, in 1794, left it in 1798, and headed the Irish Government's list of per- 
sons to be held as traitors, if they did not come in to be tried before December 179S. 
Eventually, he was seized at Hamburgh, (a neutral German city) deported to Ireland, 



320 LIFE OF CITREAN. 

of the jury, I am in this case of counsel for Mr. Tandy, the 
prisoner at the bar. I could have wished it had been the plea- 
sure of the gentlemen who conduct this business on the part of 
the Crown to have gone on first : the subject itself is of a very 
novel nature in this country ; but certainly it is the right of the 
Crown, and which the gentlemen have thought proper to follow, 
to call on the counsel for the prisoner to begin ; and, therefore, it 
is my duty, my lords, to submit to you, and to explain, under the 
direction of the Court, to you, gentlemen of the jury, what the 
nature of the question is that you are sworn to try. 

" An act of parliament was passed in this country, which began 
to be a law on the 6th of October, IVOS ; on that day it received 
the royal assent. By that law it is stated, that the prisoner at the 
bar had been guilty of acts of treason of many different kinds : 
and it enacted, that he should stand attainted of high treason 
except he should, on or before the first day of December following, 
surrender himself to one of the Judges of this Court, or to one of 
his Majesty's justices of the peace, for the purpose of becoming 
amenable to that law, from Yhi(;h he was supposed to have fled, in 
order to abide his trial for any crime that might be alleged against 
him. 

"It was a law not passed for the purpose of absolutely pro- 
nouncing any judgment whatsoever against him, but for the pur- 
pose of compelling him to come in and take his trial : and nothing- 
can show more strongly that that act of Parliament has not estab- 
lished anything touching the fact of the prisoner's guilt ; because 
it would be absurd, in one and the same breath, to pronounce that 
he was guilty of high treason, and then call upon him to come in 
and abide his trial : and the title of the act speaks that it is an 
act not pronouncing sentence against the prisoner, but that it is 
an act in order to compel him to come forward. 

tried, defended by Curran, and acquitted. In April ISOl, he was again tried for " invad- 
ing" Ireland, convicted, sentenced to be hanged, and was finally exchanged against a 
general officer taken by the French, and died there, soon after. — M. 



NAPPER TANDY. 321 

" This act creates a Parliamentary attainder, not founded on tlie 
establishment of the prisoner's guilt of treason, but on his contu- 
macious avoidance of trial, by standing out against a trial by law. 
I make this observation to you, gentlemen of the jury, in order 
that you may, in the first instance, discharge from your minds any 
actual belief of any criminality in the prisoner at the bar, and that 
for two reasons — first, because a well-founded conviction of his 
guilt, on the authority of this statute, might have some impression 
on the minds of men sitting in judgment on the prisoner ; but for 
a more material reason I wish to put it from your minds, because 
his guilt or innocence has nothing to do with tlie issue you are 
sworn to try. 

"Gentlemen, the issue you are called to try is not the guilt or 
innocence of the prisoner; it is therefore necessary you should 
understand exactly what it is. The prisoner was called on to show 
cause why he should not suffer death, pursuant to the enacting 
clause of the statute ; and he has put in a plea, in which he states, 
that before the timiC for surrender had expired, namely, on the 
24th of November, 1798, seven days before the day that he had 
for surrendering had expired, he was, by the order of his Majesty, 
arrested, and made a prisoner in the town of Hamburgh ; and that 
in consequence of such arrest, it became impossible for him to 
surrender himself and become amenable to justice within the time 
prescribed : and the counsel for the crown have rested the case on 
the denial, in point of fact, of this allegation ; and, therefore, the 
question, that you are to try is simplified to this — ' I was arrested,' 
says the prisoner, ' whereby it became impossible for me to sur- 
render' — to which the counsel for the crown reply, 'You have not 
been arrested at the time alleged by you, w^hereby it became impos- 
sible for you to surrender.' This I conceive to be the issue, in 
point of fact, joined between the parties, and on which it is my 
duty to explain the evidence that will be offered, 

" Mr. Tandy is a subject of this country, and had never been in 
it from the time this act of parliament passed, until he was brought 

14* 



322 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

into it after liis arrest on tlie 24tli of November, 1*798: on that 
clay he was in the town of Hamburgh. lie had seven days, in 
■which time it was practicable for him to arrive in this country, 
and surrender himself, according to the requisitions of the act of 
attainder. Every thing that could be of value to man was at stake, 
and called on him to make that surrender. If he did not sur- 
render, his life was forfeited — if he did not surrender, his fortune 
was confiscated — if he did not surrender, the blood of his family 
■was cori'upted ; and he could leave them no inheritance, but the 
diso^race of havino; suffered as a traitor. 

" Your common sense, gentlemen, will show you, that where a 
man is to forfeit his life unless he complies with the conditions of 
an act of parliament — your common sense, your common humanity 
must show you, that a man ought to be suffered to perform the 
conditions on which his life depends. It can require no argument 
to impress upon your mind, that to call on a man to surrender 
himself on pain of death, and by force to prevent him from sur- 
rendering, goes to an atrocity of oppression that no human mind 
can contemplate without horror. 

" But it seems that the prisoner at the bar was a man of too 
much consequence to the repose of all ci\dlized nations ; to the 
great moral system, I might almost say, to the great physical 
system of the universe, to be permitted to act in compliance with 
the statute that called upon him to surrender himself upon pain 
of death. The wisdom of the entire continent was called upon 
to exercise its mediation on this most momentous circumstance — 
the diplomatic wisdom of Germany was all put into action on the 
subject — the enlightened humanity of the north was called on to 
lend its aid. Gentlemen, you know as well as I the princely vir- 
tues, and the imperial qualifications, the consummate wisdom and 
sagacity of our stedfast friend and ally, the Emperor of all the 
Russias ; you must feel the awe with which he ought to be men- 
tioned : his sacred person has become embodied in the criminal 
law of England, and it has become almost a misprision to deem 



NAPPEK TANDY. o'Zd 

of him or speak of him but with reverence. I feel that reverence 
for him ; and I deem of him and conceive him to be a constella- 
tion of all virtue — compared with whose radiance the Ursamajor 
twinkles only as the glow-worm. And, gentlemen, what was the 
result of the exercise of this combination of wisdom ? That James 
Napper Tandy ought not to be got r^d of in the ordinary way. They 
felt an honest and a proper indignation, that a little community 
like Hamburgh should embezzle that carcase which was the pro- 
perty of a mild and merciful Government : they felt a proper 
indignation that the senate of Hamburgh, under the present 
sublime system, should defraud the mercy of the Government of 
the blood of the prisoner, or cheat the gibbet of his bones, or 
deprive the good and loyal ravens of this country of his flesh — 
and accordingly by an order issued to these miserable inhabitants 
of the town of Hamburgh, who Avere made to feel that common 
honesty and common humanity can only be sustained by a strength 
not to be resisted ; they were obliged to break the ties of justice 
and hospitality — to trample on the privileges that every stranger 
claims ; they were obliged to suffer the prisoner to be trampled 
on, and meanly, and cruelly, and pitiably to give up this unfor- 
tunate man to the disposal of those who could demand him at 
such a price. 

" If a surrender, in fact, had been necessary on the part of the 
prisoner, certainly a very material object was achieved by arrest- 
ing him : because they thereby made it impossible for him to 
avail himself of the opportunity. They made it impossible for 
him to avail himself of the surrender, if the reflection of his mind 
led him to it. If a sense of the duty he owed his family led him 
to a wish, or to an intention, of availing himself of the remaining 
time he had to surrender, they were determined he should not 
take advantage of it. He had been guilty of what the law deems 
a crime, that is, of flying from justice, though it does not go to 
the extent of working a corruption of blood : but by this act of 
power — by this act of tyrannic force, he was prevented from doing 



,324 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

thfit which every court of justice must intend he was willing to 
do : which the law intends he would have done — which the law 
gave him time to do — which the law supposes he might have done 
the last hour, as well as the first. He was on his passage to this 
country ; that would not have taken up a third part of the time 
that had now elapsed — but by .seizing on him in the manner he 
was arrested, it became impossible for him to surrender himself, 
or become amenable to justice. 

But, gentlemen, the prisoner, when he was arrested, was treated 
in a manner that made it impossible for him to do any act that 
might have been considered as tantamount to a surrender. He 
was confined in a dungeon, little larger than a grave — he was 
loaded with irons — he -was chained by an iron that communicated 
from liis arm to his leg; and that so short, as to grind into his 
flesh. In such a state of restriction did he remain for fifteen days ; 
in such a situation did he lie in a common vault ; food was cut 
into shapeless lumps, and flung to him by his filthy attendants as 
he lay on the ground, as if he had been a beast ; he had no bed 
to lie on ; not even straw to coil himself up in, if he could have 
slept. In that situation he remained in a foreign country for 
fifteen days of his long imprisonment ; and he is now called to show 
good cause why he should not sufier death, because he did not 
surrender himself and become amenable to the law. He was 
debarred all communication whatsoever ; if he attempted to speak 
to the sentinels that guarded him, they could not understand him : 
he did make such kind of indications of his misery and his suff'er- 
ings as could be conveyed by signs, but he made them in vain ; and 
he is now called on to show good cause wherefore he did contu- 
maciously and traitorously refuse to surrender himself, and become 
amenable to the law. 

" Gentlemen of the jury, I am stating facts that happened in a 
foreign country ; will you expect that I should produce witnesses 
to lay those abominable ofiences before you in evidence ? It was 
Tiot in the power of the prisoner at the bar to procure witnesses ; 



NAPPER TANDY. 325 

he was not of importance enougli to call on tlie armed civilization 
of Europe, or on the armed barbarity of Europe, to compel the 
inhabitants of the town where he was imprisoned to attend at the 
bar of this court to give evidence for the preservation of his life ; 
but though such interposal could not be obtained to preserve his 
life, it could be procured for the purposes of blood. 

" x\nd this is one reason why the rights of neutral states should 
be respected : because, if an individual, claiming those privileges, 
be torn from that sanctuary, he comes without the benefit of the 
testimony of those that could save his life. It is a maxim of law, 
that no man shall lose any thing, much less his life, by the non- 
performance of a condition, if that non-performance had arisen by 
the act of God, or of the party who is to avail himself of the con- 
dition ; that the impossiblity so imposed shall be an excuse for the 
non-performance of the condition : that is the defence the prisoner 
relies upon here. ' Why did you not surrender, and become 
amenable to justice ? Because I was in chains.' — ' Why did you 
not come over to Ireland ? Because I was a prisoner in a grave in 
the town of Hamburgh.' ' Why did you not do something tanta- 
mount to a surrender ? Because I was unpractised in the lan- 
guage of the strangers, who could not be my protectors, because 
they were also my fellow-sufferers.' 

" But he may push this reasoning much farther : the statute 
was made for the express purpose of making him amenable. When 
the crow^n seized him at Hamburgh, it thereby made him amen- 
able, and so satisfied the law. It could not seize him for execu- 
tion as an attainted person, for the time had not arrived at wMch 
the attainder could attach. The King, therefore, seized him as a 
man liable to be tried, and yet he calls upon him to suffer death, 
because he did not make himself amenable by voluntary sur- 
render ; that is, because he did not do that which the King was 
pleased to do for him, by a seizure which made it at once unneces- 
sary and impossible for hira to do by any voluntary act. 



326 LIFE OF CIJEEAN. 

" Such is the barbarity and folly that must ever arise, when 
force and power assume the functions of reason and justice. 

" As to his intention after the arrest, it is clearly out of the 
question. The idea of intention is not applicable to an impossible 
act. To give existence to intention, the act must be possible, and 
the agent must be free. Gentlemen, this, and this only, is the 
subject on which you are to give a verdict. I do think it is 
highly honourable to the gentleman who has come over to this 
country, to give the prisoner at the bar the benefit of his e\a- 
denoe ; no process could have compelled him : the inhabitants of 
foreign countries are beyond the reach of process to bring wit- 
nesses to give evidence. But we have a witness, and that of the 
highest respectability, who was himself at Hamburgh at the time 
Mr. Tandy was arrested, in an ofiScial situation. We will call Sir 
James Crawford, who was then the King's representative in the 
town of Hamburgh. We will show you, by his evidence, the 
facts that I have stated ; that before the time allowed to the pri- 
soner to surrender had elapsed, Sir James Crawford did in his 
official situation, and by orders from his own Government, cause 
the person of Mr. Tandy to be arrested in Hamburgh. Far am 
I from suspecting, or insinuating against Sir James Crawford, that 
any of the cruelties that were practised on that abused and help- 
less community, or on my abused client, were committed at his 
instance or personal sanction ;• certain am I that no such fact 
could be possible. 

" I told you before, gentlemen, that the principal question you 
had to try was, the fact on which the parties had joined issue : 
the force and arrest alleged by the prisoner ; and the denial of 
that force by the counsel for the Crown. There is one considera- 
tion, that I think necessary to give some attention to. What you 
may think of the probable guilt or innocence of the prisoner, is not 
within the question that you are to decide ; but if you should have 
any opinion of that sort, the verdict given in favour of the prisoner 
can be no preclusion to public justice, if after your verdict they 



NAPPEK TANDY. 327 

still call for liis life ; the utmost that can follow from a verdict in 
his favour will be, that he will be considered as a person who has 
surrendered to justice, and must abide his trial for any crime that 
may be charged against him. There are various ways of getting 
rid of him, if it is necessary to the repose of the Avorld that he 
should die. 

" I have said, if he has committed any crime, he is amenable to 
justice, and in the hands of the law : he may be proceeded against 
before a jury, or he may be proceeded against in another and 
more summary manner ; it may so happen that you may not be 
called upon to dispose finally of his life or of his character. 

" Whatever verdict a jury can pronounce upon him can be of 
no final avail. There was, indeed, a time when a jury was the 
shield of liberty and life : there was a time, when I never rose to 
address it without a certain sentiment of confidence and pride ; 
but that time is past. I have no heart now to make any appeal 
to your indignation, your justice, or your humanity. I sink under 
the consciousness that you are nothing. With us, the trial by 
jury has given place to shorter, and, no doubt, better modes of 
disposing of life. Even in the sister nation, a verdict can merely 
prevent the duty of the hangman ; but it never can purge the 
stain which the first malignity of accusation, however falsified by 
proof, stamps indelibly on the character of an ' acquitted felon.' 
To speak proudly of it to you would be a cruel mockery of your 
condition ; but let me be at least a supplicant with you for its 
memory. Do not, I beseech you, by a vile instrumentality, cast 
any disgrace upon its memory. 

" I know you are called out to-day to fill up the ceremonial of 
a gaudy pageant, and that to-morrow you will be flung back again 
among the unused and useless lumber of the constitution : but,, 
trust me, the good old trial by jury will come round again ; trust 
me, gentlemen, in the revolution of the great wheel of hum.an 
affairs, though it is now at the bottom, it will reascend to the 
station it has lost, and once more assume its former dignity and 



328 LIFE OF CUliKxiN. 

respect ; trust me, that mankind will become tired of resisting tlie 
spirit of innovation, by subverting every ancient and established 
principle, and by trampling upon every right of individuals and of 
nations. Man, destined to the grave — nothing that appertains to 
him is exempt from the stroke of death — his life fieeth as a dream, 
.his liberty passeth as a shadow. So, too, of his slavery — it is not 
immortal ; the chain that grinds him is gnawed by rust, or it is 
rent by fury or by accident, and the ivretch is astonished at the 
intrusions of freedom, unannounced even by the harbinger of hope'^ 
Let me therefore conjure you, by the memory of the past, and the 
hope of the future, to respect the fallen condition of the good ofd 
trial by jury, and cast no infamy upon it. If it is necessary to 
the repose of the world that the prisoner should die, there are 
many ways of killing him — we know there are ; it is not necessary 
that you should be stained with his blood. The strange and still 
more unheard of proceedings against the prisoner at the bar, have 
made the business of this day a subject of more attention to all 
Europe than is generally excited by the fate or the suffering of 
any individual. Let me, therefore, advise you seriously to reflect 
upon 3'our situation, before you give a verdict of meanness and of 

* There is a passage in Dante descriptive of the same state of amazement, produced 
by an unexpected escape from danger. 

E come quei che con lena affanata, 

Uscito del pelago alia riva, 

Si volge all' acqua perigliosa, e guata. 

(And, as a man with difficult short breath, 
Forespent with toiling, 'scaped from sea to shore, 
Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands 
At gaze.) 

Oary''s Translation. 

A distinguished Italian writer, (Ugo Foscolo, in the Quarterly Review) now in Eng- 
land, commenting upon this passage in a late number of a periodical work, observes, 
nearly in the words of Mr. Curran, " The concluding verse places the man in that state 
of stupor which is felt upon passing at once to safety from despair, without the interven- 
tion of hope : he looks back upon perdition with a stare, unconscious how he had escaped 
it."— C. 



SIR HENRY HAYES. 329 

blood that must stamp the character of folly and barbarity upon 
this already disgraced and degraded country.'"" 

[A trial of great local interest, in wliich jSIr. Curran was engaged, 
came off at the Spring Assizes of Cork, on April 13th, 1801, when 
Sir Henry Hayes was capitally indicted for the abduction of Miss 
Pike. The facts were these ; Hayes was son of the Alderman of 
Cork, and had ran through a large property. He was fashionable 
and expensive in his habits. A widower, with several children, he 
determined to retrieve his fortune by marriage. Samuel Pike, a 
Quaker, was a banker in Cork, on whose death, Mary Pike, his 
daughter, became possessed of £20,000. She was 21 years of age, 
in weak health, and when the cause for action took place, was liv- 
ing with her relation, Mr. Cooper Penrose, at his beautiful seat 
called Wood Hill, on the Glanmire road, near Cork. On Sunday, 
July 2, 1797, Sir Henry Hayes, who was unacquainted with Mr. 
Penrose, rode over to Wood Hill, was shown round the demesne, and 
finally, in the full spirit of hospitality, w^as asked to remain and 
dine. At table, he first saw Miss Pike, but had no conversation 
with her as she sat at a side table, with Mr. Penrose's daughters. 

Hayes returned to Cork, and having ascertained that Miss Pike's 
mother was a patient of Dr. Gibbings, wrote to him on some trifling 
pretence, obtained a reply, and then, closely imitating the handwrit- 
ing, sent a note to Mr. Penrose, intimating that Mrs. Pike was taken 
suddenly ill and wdshed to see her daughter, and to command dis- 
patch as she was not expected to live many hours. This missive 
reached Mr. Penrose after midnight, on July 22nd, 1797, and Miss 
Pike, accompanied by Miss Penrose and another relative, set off in 
Mr. Penrose's carriage. The night was tempestuous and dark. 
The carriage had not proceeded very far before it was stopped 
by a body of armed men. Miss Pike was identified by a muffled 
man, placed in another carriage with a lady, and driven off, sur- 



* The jury found a verdict for the prisoner. He was afterwards permitted to retire 
to the continent, where he ended his days.— C. 



330 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

rounded by an armed escort, to Mount Yernon, the seat of Sir Henry 
Hayes, in the suburbs. The muffled man was Hayes, the lady was 
his sister. The traces of Mr. Penrose's carriage were cut to pre- 
vent pursuit. The muffled man took Miss Pike in his arms, out 
of the carriage, into his house, and placed her for that night, under 
charge of two women. Next morning, at day-break, she was forced 
into an upper room by Sir Henry and Miss Hayes, and a man in 
priest's habits was introduced, who performed a sort of marriage 
ceremonial, in which Sir Henry attempted to force a ring upon 
her finger, which she threw away. She was then locked up in 
the room, which contained only a table and bed, and after tea had 
been given to her. Sir Henry, (to use her own words,) w^as " com- 
ing in and out, and behaving in the rudest manner," and saying she 
was his wife. However, he did not perpetrate the worst outrage. 
She insisted on writing to her friends, who liberated her the next 
day. 

If Sir Henry Hayes was popular, Miss Pike's friends were 
wealthy, persevering, and determined. They appealed to the law, 
such abduction being then a capital felony under the statute. 
Hayes fled. A reward of £2000 was offered by the Government 
and Miss Pike's friends, but in vain. Hayes was outlawed, but 
actually returned to Cork, where he lived, unconcealed and unmo- 
lested. At last, Hayes wrote to Miss Pike, politely offering to 
stand his trial, which took place (the outlawry being reversed, by 
consent,) nearly four years after the commission of the offense. Mr. 
Justice Day was the presiding Judge. There was a great array 
of counsel on both sides. For the Crown, Mr. Curran and six 
others; for the prisoner, Mr. Quin and seven more. Hayes came 
into Court attended by "host of friends." Curran's speech was 
earnest, eloquent, grave, and at times pathetic. He dwelt on the 
anomaly of Miss Pike, the victim, being compelled to fly to Eng- 
land, for security, during two years that the ravisher w^as "basking 
in the favours of a numerous kindred and acquaintance, in a 
widely-extended city," where every man knew his person. Hayes 



HEYEY Ain) SIRR. 331 

called no witnesses, his counsel pressing for an acquittal in law, 
from the insufficiency of evidence under the statute of abduction. 
Curran replied. The jury returned a verdict of " Guilty," with a 
recommendation to mercy. The point of law raised by Sir Henry's 
counsel was referred to the twelve judges and decided against him. 
The capital punishment was not inflicted, being commuted to 
transportation for life. In a few years, a full pardon was granted. 
Hayes returned to Cork, and died over twenty years after the 
tria].^'] 

The next of Mr. Curran's professional efforts which shall be 
noticed was that in behalf of Mr. John Hevey, who brought an 
action for false imprisonment against Charles Henry Sirr, town- 
major of Dublin, f This, though a private case, was intimately 
connected with the public events in which the preceding state 
trials originated. It also resembles them in the examples of suffer- 
ing and depravity which it exhibits. It presents a picture of a race 
of beings, the greatest scourge of an agitated country — political 
middle-men, who, conscious that the restoration of tranquillity 
must throw them out of employment and plunder, feel an interest 
in aggravating the public disorders by every art of violence and 
persecution, which, under the pretext of proving their zeal, can 
prolong the necessity of their office. Of this office and its detest- 

* The popular voice was wholly in favor of Sir Henry Hayes. A ballad-singer made a 
good deal of money by selling a song, the refrain of which was 
Sir Henry kissed — Sir Henry kissed 

Sir Henry kissed the Quaker. 
And what if he did ? You ugly thing, 
I'm sure he did not ate her ! 

On the morning of the trial, as Mr. Curran was going into the Court-House, some of the 
populace, who greatly admired him, called out " God bless you, Mr. Curran ! I hope you'll 
win the day !" Curran, who was against their favorite, answered " If I do, you'll lose the 
Knight:'''' I recollect having seen Sir Henry Hayes, in the streets of Cork, in 1825. He 
was a low-statured, thick-set man, wearing a broad-brimmed hat. It was said that his 
constant companion was a man who used to walk with his head on one side, the effect, I 
have heard, of his having been hanged in the rebellion of 1798. — M. 

t May 17th, 1802.— C. [The trial took place before Lord Kilwarden and a special 
jury.— M.] 



332 LIFE OF CURRAK". 

able abuses, a tolerable idea may be formed from a sketch of Mr. 
Curran's statement. 

"It was at that sad crisis [1198) that the defendant, from an 
obscure individual, started into notice and consequence. It is the 
hot-bed of public calamity that such inauspicious products are 
accelerated without being matured. From being a town major, 
a name scarcely legible in the list of public incumbrances, he 
became at once invested with all the real powers of the most abso- 
lute authority. 

" With this gentleman's extraordinary elevation began the story 
of the sufferings and ruin of the plaintiff. A man was prosecuted 
by the state ; Hevey, who was accidentally present at the trial, 
knowing the witness for the prosecution to be a person of infamous 
character, mentioned the circumstance in court. He was sworn, 
and on his evidence the prisoner was acquitted. In a day or two 
after, Major Sirr met the plaintiff in the street, asked how he dared 
to interfere in his business ? and swore, by God, he would teach 
him how to meddle with ' his peoj)le.' On the following evening 
poor Hevey was dogged in the dark into some lonely alley — there 
he was seized, he knew not by whom, nor by what authority — his 
crime he soon learned, it was the treason he had committed against 
the majesty of Major Sirr. He w^as immediately conducted to a 
new place of imprisonment in the Castle-yard, called the provost. 
Of this mansion of misery Major Sandys was the keeper, a gentle- 
man of whom I know how dangerous it is to speak, and of whom 
every prudent person will think and talk with all due reverence. 
Here Hevey lay about seven weeks; he was at last discovered 
among the sweepings of the prison. ' Hevey ' (said the Major) ' I 
have seen you ride, I think, a smart sort of mare — ^you can't use 
her here — you had better give me an order for her.' Hevey, in- 
duced by hope and by fear, gave the order. The Major accepted 
the order, saying, ' Your courtesy will not cost you much — you 
are to be sent down to-morrow to Kilkenny, to be tried for your 
life — you will most certainly be hanged — and you can scarcely 



MAJOR SIRE. 333 

think that your journey to the other ^vorkl will be performed on 
horseback.' Hevey was accordingly transmitted to Kilkenny, tried 
by a court-martial, and convicted upon the evidence of a person 
under sentence of death, who had been allured by a proclamation 
offering' a reward to any man who would come forward and give 
any evidence against the traitor Ilevey. Lord Gornwallis read 
the transmiss of Hevey's condemnation — his heart recoiled from 
the detail of stupidity and barbarity. lie dashed his pen across 
the odious record, and ordered that Hevey should be forthwith 
liberated. On his return to Dublin the plaintiff met Major Sandys, 
and demanded his mare ; — ' Ungrateful villain,' (says the Major) 
' is this the gratitude you show^ to his Majesty and to me, for our 
clemency to you — you shan't get possession of the beast.' Hevey 
brought an action for the mare ; the Major, not choosing to come 
into court and suggest the probable success of a thousand actions, 
restored the property. 

" Three years," continued Mr. Curran, " had elapsed since the 
deliverance of my client ; the public atmosphere had cleared ; the 
private destiny of Hevey seemed to have brightened, but the malice 
of his enemies had not been appeased. On the 8th of last Sep- 
tember, Mr. Hevey was sitting in a public coffee-house; Major 
Sirr was there ; Mr. Hevey was informed that Major Sirr had at 
that moment said, that he (Hevey) ought to have been hanged. 
The i^laintifF was fired at the charge ; he fixed his eyes on Sirr, 
and asked if he had dared to say so ? Sirr declared that he had, 
and had said truly. Hevey answered, that he was a slanderous 
scoundrel. At that instant Sirr rushed upon him, and, assisted by 
three or four of his satellites, who attended him in disguise, secu- 
red him and sent him to the Castle guard, desiring that a receipt 
might be given for the villain. He was sent thither. The officer 
of the guard chanced to be an Englishman, but lately ai'rived in 
Ireland — he said to the bailiffs, ' If this was in England, I should 
think this gentleman entitled to bail, but I don't know the laws of 
this country ; however I think you had better loosen those irons 
on his wrists, or they may kill him.' 



334: LIFE OF CURRAN. 

"Major Sirr, the defendant, soon arrived, went into his office, 
and returned with an order which he had written, and by virtue of 
which Mr. Hevey w\as conveyed to the custody of his old friend 
and gaoler, Major Sandys. Here he was flung into a room of 
about thirteen feet by twelve ; it was called the hospital of the 
provost ; it was occupied by six beds, in which were to lie fourteen 
or fifteen miserable wretches, some of them sinking under conta- 
gious disorders. Here he passed the first night without bed or 
food. The next morning his humane keeper, the Major, appeared. 
The plaintiff demanded why he was so imprisoned, complained of 
hunger, and asked for the gaol allowance ? Major Sandys replied 
with a torrent of abuse, which he concluded by saying, ' your 
crime is your insolence to Major Sirr ; however, he disdains to 
trample on you ; you may appease him by proper and contrite 
submission ; but unless you do so you shall rot Avhere you are. I 
tell you this, that if Government will not protect us, by God, we 
will not protect them. You will probably (for I know your inso- 
lent and ungrateful hardiness) attempt to get out by an habeas 
corpus, but in that you will find yourself mistaken, as such a ras- 
cal deserves.' Hevey was insolent enough to issue a habeas cor- 
pus, and a return was made on it, ' that Hevey w^as in custody 
under a warrant from General Craig, on a charge of treason.' That 
this return w^as a gross falsehood, fabricated by Sirr, I am instructed 
to assert. The judge, before whom this return was brought, felt that 
he had no authority to liberate the unhappy prisoner ; and thus, 
by a most inhuman and malicious lie, ray client was again reman- 
ded to the horrid mansion of pestilence and famine. Upon this 
Mr. Hevey, finding that nothing else remained, signed a submission 
dictated by Sandys, was enlarged from confinement, and brought 
the present action." 

The foregoing is a very curtailed sketch of the particulars of 
this case ; those who partake of the prevailing taste for strong 
emotions are referred to the entire report, where they will find in 
every line abundant sources of additional excitement. 

Of the style in which the advocate commented upon these 



STATE OF IRELAXD. 335 

extraordinnry facts, the following is among the most striking 
examples : 

Adverting to the ignorance in which England was kept regard- 
ing the sufferings of Ireland, and to the benefit to be derived from 
sending her one authenticated example, Mr. Curran goes on — " I 
cannot also but observe to you, that the real state of one country 
is more forcibly impressed on the attention of another by a verdict 
on such a subject as this, than it could be by any general descrip- 
tion. When you endeavour to convey an idea of a great number 
of barbarians practising a great variety of cruelties upon an incal- 
culable number of sufierers, nothing defined or specific finds its way 
to the heart ; nor is any sentiment excited, save that of a general, 
erratic, unappropiated commiseration. If, for instance, you wished 
to convey to the mind of an English matron the horrors of that 
direful period, when, in defiance of the remonstrance of the ever 
to be lamented Abercromby,* our poor people were surrendered to 
the licentious brutality of the soldiery, by the authority of the 
State — you would vainly endeavour to give her a general picture 
of lust, and rapine, and murder, and conflagration. By endea- 
vouring to comprehend every thing, you would convey nothing. 
"When the father of poetry wishes to pourtray the movements of 
contending armies and an embattled field, he exemplifies only, he 
does not describe — he does not venture to describe the perplexed 
and promiscuous conflicts of adverse hosts, but by the acts and 
fates of a few individuals he conveys a notion of the vicissitudes 
of the fight and the fortunes of the day. So should your story to 
her keep clear of generalities ; instead of exhibiting the picture of 
an entire province, select a single object, and even in that single 
object do not release the imagination of your hearer from its task, 
by giving more than an outline. Take a cottage — place the 
aff'righted mother of her orphan daughters at the door, the pale- 
ness of death in her face, and more than its agonies in her heart — 

* Sir Ralph Abercromby (born in 1738, died in ISOl) commanded the troops in Ireland 
during the early part of tho Rebellion of 1798 ; but his disgust at the system of cruelty and 
tyranny sanctioned there by the Government, caused him to make indignant remon- 
strances, which were answered by his recall. — M. 



33 G LIFE OF CURE AN. 

her aching heart, her anxious ear struggling through the mist of 
closing day to catch the approaches of desolation and dishonour. 
The ruffian gang arrives — the feast of plunder begins — the cup of 
madness kindles in its circulation — the wandering glances of the 
ravisher become concentrated upon the shrinking and devoted 
victim : you need not dilate — you need not expatiate — the unpol- 
luted mother, to whom you tell the story of horror, beseeches you 
not to proceed ; she presses her child to her heart — she drowns 
it in her tears — her fancy catches more than an angel's tongue 
could describe ; at a single view she takes in the whole miserable 
succession of force, of profanation, of despair, of death. So it is in 
the Cjuestion before us. If anj- man shall hear of this day's trans- 
action, he cannot be so foolish as to suppose that we have been 
confined to a single character like those now brought before you. 
No, gentlemen, far from it — he will have too much common sense 
not to know, that outrages like these are never solitary ; that 
"where the public calamity generates imps like these, their number 
is as the sands of the sea, and their fury as insatiable as its 
waves." 

The jury awarded Mr. Hevey i£150 damages:* out of Ireland 
this verdict excited some surprise and indignation, feelings which 
sufficiently corroborate Mr. Curran's assertion, that the internal con- 
dition of his country was but little known in the sister kingdom. 
A story of such complicated sufferings and indignities would have 
found afar different reception from an English jury — but the plain- 
tiff in this action was a person to whom,' in Ireland, it would have 
been deemed disloyal to have granted a just remuneration. Hevey 
was susjDected of disaffection in 1798, and the men who were thus 
regardless of his appeal to their sympathy, were avenging the 
popular excesses of that year. 

In the course of Mr. Curran's observations upon the persecution 
of his client in this case, he took an occasion of introducing a happy 

* Plunket was counsel for Major Sirr. Despite the favourable verdict, Hevey was 
ruined. The long imprisonment made hita bankrupt. Poverty and sorrow broke his 
mind (said Davis), and he died a pauper lunatic shortly after.— M. 



WILLIAM GODWIN. 337 

and well-merited compliment to a friend and a man of genius. 
"No country" (said lie) "governed by any settled laws, or treated 
with common humanity, could furnish any occurrences of such 
unparalleled atrocity ; and if the author of Caleb Williams, or of 
the Simple Story,* were to read the tale of this man's sufterings, it 
might, I think, humble the vanity of their talents (if they are not 
too proud to be vain) when they saw how much more fruitful a 
source of incident could be found in the infernal workings of the 
heart of a malignant slave, than in the richest copiousness of the 
most fertile and creative imagination." 

Among his English friends, the author of Caleb Williams was 
the one to whom Mr. Curran, during the last twenty years of his 
life, was the most attached, and in whose society he most delighted. 
However he may have dissented from some of Mr. Godwin's 
speculative opinions, he always considered him as a man of the 
most decidedly original genius of his time, and uniformly discoun- 
tenanced the vulgar clamour with which it was the fashion to assail 
him. There are many who well remember his fervour and elo- 
quence upon this topic, the tears which he so frequently excited 
by his glowing descriptions of the private excellencies of his friend, 
and of the manly, philosophic equanimity by which he triumphed 
over every accident of fortune. Mr. Curran's affection and respect 
were not unreturned — Mr. Godwin attended him in his last illness, 
watched over him till he expired, accompanied him to his grave, 
and has since his death omitted no occasion, in public or private, 
of honouring his memory .f 

* Mrs. Inchbald. — M. 

t His work, Mandeville, is dedicated to the memory of Mr. Curran, "the sincerest 
friend he ever had," a tribute of generous and disinterested regard, of which the motives 
are above all suspicion.— C. [Godwin, who was six years younger than Curran, survived 
him, not departing this life until 1836. At the time when Curran complimented Godwin, 
in his speech for Hevey, the novelist, who was on a visit at the Priory, was in Court. On 
returning, Curran, who expected at least a word or two of acknowledgmeiit, and received 
none, asked Godwin what he thought of the trial ? " Oh," said Godwin, " I had forgot- 
ten. I am glad that I heard you, as I have now some idea of your manner.''^ The very 
last note written by Curran was an invitation to Charles Phillips to meet Godwin at 
dinner."— M.] 

15 



338 LIFE OF CIJERA^<. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Mr. Curran visUs Paris— Letter to his son— Insurrection of 1S03— Defence of Kirwan— 
Death of Lord Kilwarden — Intimacy of Mr. Robert Eminett in Mr. Curran's family, and 
its consequences — Letter from Mr. Emmett to Mr. Currau — Letter from the same to Mr. 
Richard Curran. 

This year (1802) Mr. Curran, taking advantage of tlie short 
peace, revisited France. His journey thither now was undertaken 
■with views and anticipations very different from those which had 
formerly attracted his steps towards that country. He had this 
time little hope of any gratification ; he went from an impulse of 
melancholy curiosity, to witness the extent of his own disappoint- 
ments, and to ascertain in person whether anything worth saving, 
in morals and institutions, had escaped the general wreck ; for he 
was amono- those whose general attachment to freedom had in- 
duced them to hail with joy the first prospects which the revolu- 
tion seemed to open upon France. His own early admiration of 
the literary and social genius of her people had made him watch, 
with the liveliest interest, the progress of their struggles, until 
they assumed a character which no honourable mind could con- 
template without anguish and horror. 

To Mr. Curran, too, every painful reflection upon the destiny 
of France was embittered from its connexion with a subject so 
much nearer to his heart, the fate of Ireland : for to whatever 
cause the late rebellion might be attributed, whether to an 
untimely and intemperate spirit of innovation in the people, or to 
an equally violent spirit of coercion in the state, it was in the 
influence of the French revolution that the origin of both might 
be found. 

It will be seen, from some passages in the following letter to 



VISIT TO PAEIS. 339 

one of his sons, that he found little in France under its consular 
government to diminish his regrets or justify a return to hope. 

" Paris, October 5, 1S02. 

"Dear Richard, 

" Here I am, after having lingered six or seven days very 
unnecessarily in London. I don't know that even the few da^^s 
that I can spend here will not be enough ; sickness long and 
gloomy ; convalescence disturbed by various paroxysms ; relapse 
confirmed ; the last a spectacle soon seen and painliilly dwelt upon. 
I shall stay here yet a few days. There are some to whom I have 
introductions that I have not seen. I don't suppose I shall get 
myself presented to the consul. Not having been privately bap- 
tized at St. James's would be a difficulty ; to get over it a favour ; 
and then the trouble of getting one's self costumed for the show; 
and then the small value of being driven, like the beasts of the 
field before Adam when he named them ; I think I sha'n't mind 
it. The character of this place is wonderfully different from that 
of London. I think I can say without affectation, that I miss the 
frivolous elegance of the old times before the Revolution, and that 
in the place of it I see a squalid, beard-grown, vulgar \nvacity ; 
but still it is vivacity, infinitely preferable to the frozen and awk- 
ward sulk that I have left. Here they certainly wish to be happy, 
and think that by being merry they are so. I dined yesterday 
with Mr. Fox, and went in the evening to Tivoli, a great planted, 
illuminated garden, where all the bourgeoisie of Paris, and some of 
better description, went to see a balloon go up. The aeronaut was 
to have ascended with a smart girl, his honne amie ; for some 
reason that I know not, some one else went up in her place ; she 
was extremely mortified ; the balloon rose, diminished, vanished 
into night; no one could guess what might be its fate, and the 
poor dear one danced the whole evening to shake off her melan- 
choly. 

" I am glad I have come here. I entertained many ideas of it, 



oiO LIFE OF CUSKAN. 

which I have entirely given up, or very much indeed altered. 
Never was there a scene that could furnish more to the weeping 
or the grinning philosopher ; they well might agree that human 
aflPairs were a sad joke*. I see it every where, and in every thing. 
The wheel has run a complete round ; only changed some spokes 
and a feAv ' fellows,' very little for the better, but the axle certainly 
has not rusted ; nor do I see any likelihood of its rusting. At 
present all is quiet except the tongue, thanks to those invaluable 
protectors of peace, the army ! ! At Tivoli last night we had at 
least an hundred soldiers, with fixed bayonets. The consul now 
lives at St. Cloud in a magnificence, solitary, but still fitting his 
marvellous fortune. He is very rarely seen — he travels by night 
— is indefatigable — has no favourite, &c. 

" As to the little affairs at the Priory ,f I can scarcely conde- 
scend, after a walk in the Louvre, amid the spirit of those arts 
which were inspired by freedom, and have been transmitted to 
power, to think of so poor a subject. I hope to get a letter from 
you in London, at Osborne's, Adelphi. Many of the Irish are 
here — not of consequence, to be in danger : I have merely heard 
of them. Yesterday I met Arthur O'Connor in the street, with 
Lord and Lady Oxford. Her ladyship very kindly pressed me to 
dine : but I was engaged. I had bargained for a cabriolet, to go 



* This idea occurs again in a speech, delivered by Mr. Curran two years subsequent 
to the date of the above letter. "I find, my lords, I have undesignedly raised a laugh. 
Never did I less feel merriment — let me not be condemned — let not the laugh be mistaken. 
Never was Mr. Hume more just than when he says, ' that in many things the extremes 
are nearer to one another than the means.' Few are those events, that are produced by 
vice and folly, which fire the heart with indignation, that do not also shake the sides 
with laughter. So when the two famous moralists of old beheld the sad spectacle of life, 
the one burst into laughter, and the other melted into tears ; they were each of them 
right and equally right. 

Si credas utrique 
Res sunt humanae flebile ludibrium. 

But these are the bitter ireful laughs of honest indignation, or they are the laughs of 
hectic melancholy and despair." — Speech in behalf of Mr. Justice Johnson. 
t Mr. Curran's country seat in the vicinity of DubUn. — 0. 



341 



and see my poor gossip. Set out at two : at the end of five miles 
found I was totally misdirected — returned to St. Denys — got a 
miserable dinner, and was fleeced as usual. I had some vengeance 
of the rascal, however, by deploring the misery of a country where 
a stranger had nothing for his dinner but a bill. You feel a 
mistake in chronology in the two " yesterdays ;" but, in fact, part 
of this was written yesterday, and the latter part now. I need not 
desire you to bid any one remember me ; but tell them I remem- 
ber them. Say how Eliza does. Tell Amelia and Sarah I do not 

forget them. God bless you all. 

"J. P.O." 

A more detailed and elaborate exposition of Mr. Curran's 
opinions upon the condition of France at this period, and upon the 
merits of its ruler's system, is contained in a speech which he 
made the following year in defence of Owen Kirwan,"'^' one of the 
persons engaged in the insurrection of the 23d of July, 1803. He 
undertook the office of counsel for some of these deluded insur- 
gents, not in the expectation that any aid of his could save them, 
but because it aftbrded him an opportunity of warning his country- 
men against a recurrence to such fatal enterprises, by publicly 
protesting against their folly and criminality, and by exposing the 
fatuity of those who imagined that a revolution, achieved by the 
assistance of France, could have any other effect than that of sub- 
jecting Ireland to the merciless control of that power. His 



* The trial of Owen Kirwan arose out of Robert Emmett's unsuccessful attempt at a 
general insurrection, in 1S03. The revolt was over almost before it commenced. Govern- 
ment made numerous arrests. A special commission was issued for the trial of the priso- 
ners, and the judges were Lord Norbury, Mr. Justice Finucane, and Barons George and 
Daly. Nineteen persons were tried; one was acquitted, one was respited, and Robert 
Emmett, with sixteen more, were convicted and executed. Several of the prisoners were 
defended by Curran, Ponsonby, and McNally; but Curran's only speech was for Owen 
Kirwan, who was convicted. No other verdict could have been given on the evidence, 
proof being given of the outbreak, and of Kirwan (a tailor in Plunket street, Dublin) 
having turned out from his shop with a piiie on liis shoulder, at the head of several men. 
It was attempted to be shown, but without success, (luit Kirwan had slept at home on the 
night in question. He was executed on September 3, iSaS.— ]\I. 



342 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

opinions and advice upon this subject he gave at considerable 
length in the speech alluded to, vv'hich, independent of any other 
claims to praise, remains an honourable testimony of his prompt- 
ness in opposing the passions of the people, where he did not con- 
ceive that they were the necessary result of more reprehensible 
passions in a higher quarter. He has hitherto been seen almost 
uniformly exclaiming against the latter as the principal causes of 
his country's disasters ; it is therefore due to him, and to the Gov- 
ernment of 1803, to give an example of the different language that 
he used where he considered it deserved. 

" I cannot but confess that I feel no small consolation when 1 
compare my present with my former situation upon similar occa- 
sions. In those sad times to which I allude, it was frequently my 
fate to come forward to the spot where I now stand, with a body 
sinking under infirmity and disease, and a mind broken with the 
consciousness of public calamity, created and exasperated by pub- 
lic folly. It has pleased heaven that I should live to survive both 
these afllictions, and I am grateful for its mercy. I now come here 
through a composed and quiet city — I read no expression in any 
face, save such as marks the ordinary feelings of social life, or the 
various characters of civil occupation — I see no frightful spectacle 
of infuriated pov»-er or sufiering" humanity — I see no tortures — I 
hear no shrieks — I no longer see the human heart charred in the 
flame of its own vile and paltry passions, black and. bloodless, 
capable only of catching and communicating that destructive fire 
by which it devours, and is itself devoured — I no longer behold 
the ravages of that odious bigotry by which v.-e were deformed, 
and degraded, and disgraced ; a bigotry against which no honest 
man should ever miss an opportunity of putting his countrymen, 
of all sects, and of all descriptions, upon their guard. 

" Even in this melancholy place I feel myself restored and 
re created by breathing the mild atmosphere of justice, mercy, and 
humanity — feel I am addressing the parental authority of the law. 
I feel I am addressing a jury of my countrymen, of my fellow-sub- 
jects, and my fellow-Christians, against v>-hom my heart is waging 



343 

no concealed hostility, from whom my face is disguising no latent 
sentiment of repugnance or disgust. I have not now to touch the 
high-raised strings of an angry passion in those that hear me ; nor 
have I the terror of thinking, that, if those strings cannot be 
snapped by the stroke, they will be only provoked into a more 
instigated vibration. 

" I have heard much of the dreadful extent of the conspiracy 
against this country, of the narrow escape of the Government: 
you now see the fact as it is. By the judicious adoption of a mild 
and conciliatory system of conduct, what was six years ago a for- 
midable rebellion has now dwindled down to a drunken, riotous 
insurrection — disgraced, certainly, by some odious atrocities : its 
objects, whatever they were, no doubt highly criminal ; but, as an 
attack upon the state, of the most contemptible insignificance. 

" I have no pretension to be the vindicator of the Lord Lieu- 
tenant of Ireland, whose person I do not know that I have ever 
seen ; at the sajne time, v/hen I am so necessarily forced upon the 
subject, I feel no disposition to conceal the respect and satisf^iction 
with which I saw the King's representative comport himself as he 
did, at a crisis of no little anxiety, though of no considerable 
danger. I think it was a proof of his excellency's firmness and 
good sense, not to discredit his own opinion of his confidence in 
the public safety, by an ostentatious display of unnecessary open 
preparation ; '* and I think he did himself ecjual honour, by pre- 
serving his usual temper, and not suffering himself to be exasper- 
ated by the event, when it did happen, into the adoption of 
any violent or precipitate measures. Perhaps I may even be 
excused, if I confess that I was not wholly free from some profes- 
sional vanity when I saw that the descendant of a great lawyerf 

* Preparation was not made. Had Emmett's followers congregated in a compact foroo 
and assailed the Castle, it must have been taken ; for, so unprepared was the Govern- 
ment, that, whether from carelessness or design, there was not a single ball in the arsenal 
which would fit the artillery ! — M, 

t Lord Hardwicke.— M. 



o44 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

was capable of remembering what, without the memory of such 
an example, he perhaps might not have done, that, even in the 
moment of peril, the law is the best safeguard of the constitution. 
At all events, I feel that a man, who, at all times, has so freely- 
censured the extravagancies of power and force as I have done, is 
justified, if not bound, by the consistency of character, to give the 
fair attestation of his opinion to the exercise of wisdom and 
humanity wherever he finds them, whether in a friend or in a 
strano-er." 

Upon the subject of the mere political folly, setting even apart 
all moral tie of duty or allegiance, or the difiiculty or the danger " 
of Ireland's desiring to separate from England, and fraternize with 
France, Mr. Curran observes, " Force only can hold the acquisi- 
tions of the French Consul. What community of interest can he 
have with the different nations that he has subdued and plundered ? 
clearly none. Can he venture to establish any regular and pro- 
tected system of religion among them ? Wherever he erected an 
altar, he would set up a monument of condemnation and reproach 
upon those wild and fantastic speculations which he is pleased to 
dignify with the name of philosophy, but w^hich other men, per- 
haps because they are endowed with a less aspiring intellect, 
conceive to be a desperate, anarchical atheism, giving to every 
man a dispensing powder for the gratification of his passion, teach- 
ing him that he may be a rebel to his conscience with advantage, 
and to his God with impunity. Just as soon would the govern- 
ment of Britain venture to display the crescent in their churches, 
as an honorary member of all faiths to show any reverence to the 
cross in his dominions. Apply the same reasoning to liberty. Can 
he venture to give any reasonable portion of it to his subjects at 
home, or his vassals abroad ? The answer is obvious : sustained 
merely by military force, his unavoidable policy is to make the 
army every thing and the people nothing. If he ventured to elevate 
his soldiers into citizens and his wretched subjects into freemen, 



FRANCE AND lEELAND. 345 

lie would form a confederacy of mutual interest between both, 
against which he could not exist a moment. 

" I may be asked are these merely my own speculations, or have 
others in Ireland adopted them, I answer freely, non mens hie 
sermo est. It is to my own knowledge, the result of serious reflec- 
tion in numbers of our countrymen. In the storm of arbitrary 
sway, in the distraction of torture and suffering, the human mind 
had lost its poise and tone, and Avas incapable of sober reflection ; 
but, by removing those terrors from it, by holding an even hand 
between all parties, by disdaining the patronage of any sect or 
faction, the people of Ireland were left at liberty to consider her 
real situation and interest; and happily for herself, I trust in God, 
she has availed herself of the opportunity, AVith respect to the 
higher orders, even of those who thought they had some cause to 
complain, I know this to be the fact — they are not so blind as not 
to see the difference between being proud, and jealous, and punc- 
tilious, in any claim of privilege or right between themselves and 
their fellow subjects, and the mad and desperate depravity of seek- 
ing the redress of any dissatisfaction that they might feel, by an 
appeal to force, or the dreadful recourse to treason and to blood. 
As to the humbler order of our people, for whom, I confess, I feel 
the greatest sympathy, because there are more of them to be 
undone — I have not the same opportunity of knowing their actual 
opinions ; but if their opinions be other than I think they ought 
to be, would to God they were present in this place, or that I had 
the opportunity of going into their cottages — and they well kn'ow 
I should not disdain to visit them, and to speak to tliem the lan- 
guage of affection and candour on the subject — I should have little 
difficulty in showing to their quick and apprehensive minds how 
easy it is, when the heart is incensed, to confound the evils which 
are inseparable from the destiny of imperfect man, with those 
which arise from the faults or errors of his political situation. I 
would put a few questions to their candid, unadulterated sense : Do 

15* 



346 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

you tliink you have made no advance to civil prosperity within the 
last twenty years? Are your opinions of modern and subjugated 
France the same that you entertained of popular and revolu- 
tionary France fourteen years ago ? Have you any hope, that, if 
the first Consul got possession of your island, he would treat you 
half so well as he does those countries at his door, whom he must 
respect more than he can respect or regard you? Can you sup- 
pose that the perfidy and treason of surrendering your country to 
an invader would, to your new master, be any pledge of your 
allegiance ? Can you suppose that, while a single French soldier 
was willing to accept an acre of Irish ground, he would leave 
that acre in the possession of a man who had shown himself so 
stupidly dead to the suggestions of the most obvious interest, and 
to the ties of the most imperious moral obhgations? Do you 
think he would feel any kind-hearted sympathy for you ? Answer 
yourselves by asking, what sympathy does he feel for Frenchmen, 
whom he is ready by thousands to bury in the ocean, in the bar- 
barous gambling of his wild ambition ? What sympathy, then, 
could bind him to you ? He is not your countryman : the scene 
of your birth and your childhood is not endeared to his heart by 
the reflection that it was also the scene of his. He is not your 
fellow-Christian : he is not, therefore, bound to you by any simi- 
larity of duty in this world, or by any union of hope beyond the 
grave ; what, then, could you suppose the object of his visit, or the 
consequence of his success ? Can you be so foolish as not to see 
that he w^ould use you as slaves while he held you ; and that when 
he grew^ weary, wdiich he w^ould soon become, of such a w^orthless 
and precarious possession, he w^ould carry you to market in some 
treaty of peace, barter you for some more valuable concession 
and surrender you to expiate by your punishment and degrada- 
tion, the advantage you had given him by your follies and your 
crimes." 

The particulars of the scene on the night of the 23d of July are 



LOKD KILWARDEN. 34:7 

not inserted here."^' It resembled a riot rather than insurrection, 
and was alarming only because it was unexpected ; for, notwith- 
standing the momentary panic which it excited, in a few hours the 
public tranquillity was restored ; yet however innocuous to the 
state, it was to Ireland a great calamity. It revived and confirmed 
many sentiments of internal animosity and distrust, by fatally prov- 
ing that the elements of disorder were not extinct ; it violently tore 
from the services of his country the respected Lord Kilwarden, one 
of the most upright of her magistrates ; the wisest, because the 
gentlest, in her councils ; the man w^ho of all others least required 
such a martyrdom to consecrate his name. It is scarcely necessary 
to add, that to Mr. Curran the fate of a person whom he had so 
long loved and honoured, and who in the season of trial had proved 
so tender a friend to him, and to their common country, was a 
source of profound and lasting affliction.! 



* The account of the plan of insurrection, drawn up by Mr. Robert Emmett during hia 
imprisonment, has been published.— C. 

t It is universally agreed that the murder of this excellent man was the unpremedi- 
tated act of a ferocious rabble ; but there are various accounts of their probable motives 
in wantonly sacrificing so upright and humane a judge to their fury. A popular expla- 
nation of this is, that that the perpetrators mistook him for another person. There is also 
an account which admits the mistake in the first instance, but subjoins other particulars 
which appear sufficiently probable ; and as some of the facts, of which there are no doubt, 
reflect the highest honour upon Lord Kilwarden's memory, the whole shall be given 
here. In the year 1795, when he was Attorney-General, a number of young men (all of 
whom were between the age of fifteen and twenty) were indicted for high treason. 
Upon the day appointed for their trial they appeared in the dock, wearing shirts with 
tuckers and open collars, in the manner usual with boys. When the Chief Justice of the 
King's Bench, before whom they were to to be tried, came into court and observed them, 
he called out, " Well, Mr. Attorney, I suppose you're ready to go on with the trial of 
these tuckered traitors?" The Attorney-General was ready, and hatl attended for the 
purpose ; but indignant and disgusted at hearing such language from the judgment seat, 
he rose, and replied, " No, my lord, I am not ready ; and, (added he, in a low tone to 
one of the prisoners' counsel who was near him) if I have any power to save the lives of 
these boys, whose extreme youth I did not before observe, that man shall never have the 
gratification of passing sentence of death upon a single one of these tuckered traitors." 
He performed his promise, and soon after procured pardons for them all, upwn the condition 
of their expatriating themselves for ever ; but one of them obstinately refusing to accept the 
pai'don upon that condition, he was tried, convicted and executed. Thus far the facts 
rest upon credible authorities ; what follows is given as an unauthenticated report. After 



348 LIFE OF CURRAN. ' 

But it was not solely in this point of view that tlie late events 
affected Mr. Curran : there were some accompanying circumstances 
which more intimately related to himself; and however painful 
their introduction may be, it yet becomes every one who has a 
sense of the fidelity which is due to the public whom he addresses, 
not to screen himself behind his personal feelings, where a para- 
mount duty demands their sacrifice ; still less would he, upon whom 
that duty at present devolves, be justified under such a pretext, in 
leaving the possibility of any misconception or reproach regarding 
one whose memory the combined sentiments of nature, of country, 
and of individual respect, impel him to cherish and revere. In the 
following facts, as far as they are generally connected with Mr. 
Curran, there is indeed no new disclosure. It is a matter of noto- 
riety, that at this period his house was searched — that he appeared 
himself before the members of the Privy Council ; that a rumour 
prevailed, to which his political enemies gave a ready credit, and 
as far as they could, a confirmation, that he was personally impli- 
cated in the recent conspiracy. To be silent, therefore, upon a 
subject so well known, would be a fruitless effort to suppress it ; to 
allude to it remotely and timidly would be to imply that the whole 
could not bear to be told : it only remains then to give an explicit 
statement of the particulars, and to subjoin one or two original 
documents, which will be found to corroborate it in every essential 
point. 

The projector of the late insurrection, Mr. Robert Emmett, who 
was a young gentleman of a highly respectable family, of very 
striking talents and interesting manners, was in the habit of visit- 



the death of this young man, his relatives (it is said) readily listening to every misrepre- 
sentation which flattered their resentment, became persuaded that the Attorney- General 
had selected him alone to suffer the utmost severity of the law. One of these (a persoa 
named Shannon) was an insurgent on the 23d of July, and when Lord Kilwarden, hearing 
the popular cry for vengeance, exclaimed from his carriage, " It is I, Kilwarden, Chief 
Justice of the King's Bench!" "Then," cried out Shannon, "you're the man that I 
want !" and plunged a pike into his lordship's body. This story was current among the 
lower orders in Dublin, who were most likely to know the fact.— C. 



ROBERT EMMETT. 349 

ing at Mr. Ciirran's house : here he soon formed an attachment for 
[Sarah] Mr. Curran's youngest daughter. Of the progress of that 
attachment, and of the period and occasion of his divulging it to 
her, Mr. Emmett's letters, inserted hereafter, contain all that is to 
be told. It is necessary, however, to add, as indeed will appear 
from those letters, that her father remained in total ignorance of 
the motive of Mr. Emmett's visits, untill subsequent events made 
it known to all. To a man of his celebrity and attractive conversa- 
tion, there seemed nothing singular in finding his society cultivat- 
ed by any young person to whom he aftbrded (as he so generally 
did to all) the opportunities of enjoying it. As the period, how- 
ever, of the intended insurrection approached, Mr. Curran began 
to suspect, from minute indications, which would probably have 
escaped a less skilful observer, that his young visiter was actuated 
by some strong passions, Avhich it cost him a perpetual effort to 
conceal ; and in consequence, without assigning to those appear- 
ances any precise motive, or giving the subject much attention, he, 
in general terms, recommended to his family not to allow what 
was at present only a casual acquaintance to ripen into a greater 
degree of intimacy. 
^"iJpon the failure of the insurrection, its leader escaped, and 
succeeded for some weeks in secreting himself. There is reason 
to believe, that had he attended solely to his safety, he could have 
easily effected his departure from the kingdom ; but in the same 
spirit of romantic enthusiasm which distinguished his short career, 
he could not submit to leave a country to which he could never 
more return, without making an effort to have one final interviev/ 
with the object of his unfortunate attachment, in order to receive 
her personal forgiveness for what he now considered as the deep- 
est injury. It was apparently with a view to obtaining this last 
gratification that he selected the place of concealment in which 
he was discovered : he was arrested in a house situated midway 
between Dublin and Mr. Curran's country seat. Upon his person 
were found some papers, which showed that subsequent to the 



350 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 

insurrection he iiad corresponded with one of that gentleman's 
ftimily : a warrant accordingly followed as a matter of course, to 
examine Mr. Ciu'ran's house, v.'here some of Mr. Emmett's letters 
were found, which, together with the documents taken upon his 
person, placed beyond a doubt his connection with the late con- 
spiracy, and were afterwards used as e\ddence upon his trial. 

It vras from this legal proceeding that Mr. Curran received the 
first intimation of the melancholy attachment in which one of his 
children had been involved. This is not the place to dwell upon 
the agony which such a discovery occasioned to the private feelings 
of the father. It was not the private calamity alone which he had 
to deplore; it came embittered by other circumstances, which, 
for the moment, gave his sensibility an intenser shock. He was a 
prominent public character, and from the intrepid resistance which 
he had uniformly made in the senate and at the bar to the unconsti- 
tutional measures of the state, was inevitably exposed to th^ 
political hatred of many, who would have gloried in the ruin of 
his reputation as in a decisive triumph over those principles which 
he had all his life supported. He had seen and experienced too 
much of party calumny not to apprehend that it would show little 
respect for a misfortune which could afford a pretext for accusa- 
tion ; and however secure he might feel as to the final results of 
the most merciless investigation, he still could not contemplate 
without anguish the possibility of having to suffer the "humiliation 
of an acquittal." But his mind was soon relieved from all such 
distressing anticipations. He waited upon the Attorney-General,* 
and tendered his person and papers to abide any inquiry which the 
government might deem it expedient to direct. That officer 
entered into his situation with the most prompt and manly 
sympathy, and instead of assuming the character of an accuser of 

* The right honourable Staudish O'Grady, the present Chief Baron of the Exchequer In 
Ireland. — 0. [Standish O'Grady, was created Baron O'Grady of Rockbarton, and 
Viscount Guillamore, of Caher Guillamore, in the County of Limerick, in 1831, when he 
quitted the Bench. He died in April, 1840, aged T4 years.— M.] 



CUSRAN SUSPECTED. 351 

the father, more generously displayed his zeal in interceding for 
the child. At his instance Mr. Ciirran accompanied him to the 
Privy Council. Upon his first entrance there was some indication 
of the hostile spirit which he had originally apprehended. A 
noble lord, who at that time held the highest judicial situation in 
Ireland,''^ undertook to examine him upon the transaction Avhich 
had occasioned his attendance. To do this was undoubtedly his 
duty ; but overstepping his duty, or at least his prudence, he 
thought proper to preface his intended questi-bns by an austere 
authoritative air, of which the palpable meaning was, that he 
considered intimidation as the most effectual mode of extracting 
the truth. He fixed his eye upon Mr. Curran, and was proceeding 
to cross-examine his countenance, when (as is well remembered by 
the spectators of the scene) the swell of indignation, and the 
glance of stern dignity and contempt v/hich he encountered there, 
gave his own nerves the shock which he had meditated for 
another's, and compelled him to shrink back into his chair, silent 
and disconcerted at the ftiilure of his rash experiment. With this 
single exception, Mr. Curran was treated with the utmost delicacy ; 
for this he was principally indebted to the friendship of the 
Attorney-General, who finding that every inquiry and document 
upon the subject explained all the circumstances beyond the 
possibility of an unfavourable conjecture, humanely and (where it 
was necessary) firmly interposed his authority, to save the feelings 
of the parent from any additional affliction. 

The following are the letters which it seems requisite to 
introduce. There was a time when the publication of them 
would have excited pain, but that time is past. The only persons 
to whom such a proceeding could have given a pang, the father 
and the child, are now beyond its reach ; and their survivor, who 
from a sense of duty permits them to see the light, does so under 
a full persuasion, that all those who from personal knowledge, or 

* The Earl of Clare, his old antagonist,— M. 



352 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

from report, may sometimes recall their memories with sentiments 
of tenderness or esteem, will find nothing in the contents of those 
documents which can provoke the intrusion of a harsher feeling. 



FROM MR. ROBERT EMMETT TO JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, ESQ. 

" I did not expect you to be my counsel.^'' I nominated you, 
because not to have done so might have appeared remarkable. 

Had Mr. been in town, I did not even wish to have seen 

you ; but as he was not, I wrote to you to come to me once. I 
know that I have done you very severe injury, much greater than 
I can atone for with my life : that atonement I did offer to make 
before the Privy Council, by pleading guilty, if tliose documents 
were suppressed.f I offered more — I offered, if I was permitted 
to consult some persons, and if they would consent to an accom- 
modation for saving the lives of others, that I would only require 
for my part of it the suppression of those documents, and that I 
would abide the event of my own trial. This also was rejected; 
and nothing but individual information (with the exception of 
names) would be taken. My intention was, not to leave the sup- 

*Curran had originally been named as one of Emmett's counsel, but the delicacy of his 
situation forbade his acting. He had the highest opinion of him, and subsequently said : 
"I would have believed the word of Emmett as soon as the oath of any man I ever 
knew."— M. 

tHis letters to Sarah Curran. — In fact, the letters were not brought before the Court, 
on the trial, and, in fulfilment of the compact, Emmett made no legal defence. Ilis 
celebrated speech was a/^er conviction, when he was called up to offer any cause why 
sentence should not be passed. The reader of Washington Irving (the whole world), will 
recollect that the unhappy loves of Emmett and Sarah Curran, supplied a subject for one 
of the most touching and pathetic papers in " The Sketch Book." After Emmett's execu- 
tion, home became changed to Sarah Curran, and she went to live in the house of Mr. 
Penrose near Cork. There, Captain Sturgeon prevailed upon her to marry him, which she 
did, telling him that her affections were in the grave. He took her to Sicily, where, in a 
few months, she died of a broken heart. Captain Sturgeon, who survived her several 
years, was killed in battle, during the Peninsular War, — Emmett wore a tress of her hair 
next his heart, when he was executed ; and, only an hour before his death, he bade her 
farewell in this brief note, " My love, Sarah ! it was not thus that I thought to have 
requited your affection, I did hope to be a prop around which your affections might have 
clung and which never have been shaken ; but a rude blast has snapped it, and they have 
fallen over a grave !"— He died, as he had lived, fearlessly.— M. 



353 

pression of those documents to possibility, but to render it unneces- 
sary for any one to plead for me, by pleading guilty to the charge 
myself. 

" The circumstances that I am now going to mention, I do not 
state in my own justification. When I first addressed your 
daughter, I expected that in another week my own fate would be 
decided. I knew that in case of success, many others might look 
on me difierently from what they did at that moment ; but I speak 
with sincerity, when I say that I never was anxious for situation 
or distinction myself, and I did not wish to be united to one who 
was. I spoke to your daughter, neither expecting, nor, in fiict, 
under those circumstances wishing tliat there should be a return 
of attachment ; but wishing to judge of her dispositions, to know 
how far they might be not unfavourable or disengaged, and to 
know what foundation I might afterwards have to count on. I 
received no encouragement whatever. She told me that she had 
no attachment for any person, nor did she seem likely to have any 
that could make her wish to quit you. I staid away till the time 
had elapsed when I found that the event to wdiich I allude was to 
be postponed indefinitely. I returned by a kind of infatuation, 
thinking that to myself only was I gi\dng pleasure or pain. I 
perceived no progress of attachment on her part, nor anything in 
her conduct to distinguish me from a common acquaintance. 
Afterwards I had reason to suppose that discoveries were made, 
and I should be obliged to quit the kingdom immediately ; and I 
came to make a renunciation of any approach to friendship that 
might have been formed. On that very day she herself spoke to 
me to discontinue my visits ; I told her that it was my intention, 
and I mentioned the reason. I then, for the first time, found, 
when I was unfortunate, by the manner in which she was affected, 
that there was a return of affection, and that it Avas too late to 
retreat. My own apprehensions, also, I afterwards found, were 
without cause, and I remained. There has been much culpability 
on my part in all this, but there has also been a great deal of that 



Sotl- LIFE OF CUERAX. 

misfortune Avliicii seems uniformly to have accompanied me. 
That I have written to your daughter since an unfortunate event 
has taken place, was an additional breach of propriety, for which 
I have sutfered well ; but I will candidly confess, that I not only 
do not feel it to have been of the same extent, but that I consider 
it to have been unavoidable after what had passed ; for though I 
will not attempt to justify in the smallest degree my former 
conduct, yet when an attachment was once formed between us — 
and a sincerer one never did exist — I feel that, peculiarly circum- 
stanced as I then was, to have left her uncertain of my situation 
v\'Ould neither have weaned her affections, nor lessened her 
anxiety ; and looking upon her as one, whom, if I had lived, 1 
hoped to have had my partner for life, I did hold the removing 
her anxiety above every other consideration. I v.ould rather have 
had the atlections of your daughter in the back settlements of 
America, than the first situation this country could atibrd without 
them. I know not whether this will be any extenuation of my 
offence — I know not whether it will be any extenuation of it to 
know, that if I had that situation in my power at this moment, I 
w^ould relinquish it to devote my life to her happiness — I know 
not whether success would have blotted out the recollection of 
what I have done — but I know that a man, with the coldness of 
death on him, need not be made to feel any other coldness, and 
that he may be spared any addition to the misery he feels not for 
himself, but for those to whom he has left nothing but sorrow."* 

FROM THE SAME TO RICHARD CURRAN, ESQ. 
" MY DEAREST RICHARD, 

" I find I have but a few^ hours to live, but if it was the last 
moment, and that the power of utterance wa,s leaving me, I would 



*The original, finra which the above has been copied, is not signed or dated. It was 
written in the interval between Mr. Emmett's conviction and execution. — C. 



ROBERT EMMETT. 355 

thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generous expres- 
sions of affection and forgiveness to me. If there was any one in 
the world in whose breast my death might be supposed not to stifle 
every spark of resentment, it might be you ; I have deeply injured 
you ; I have injured the happiness of a sister that you love, and 
who was formed to give happiness to every one about her, instead 
of having her own mind a pray to affliction. Oh ! Richard, I have 
no excuse to offer, but that I meant the reverse ; I intended as 
much happiness for Sarah as the most ardent love could have 
given her. I never did tell you how much I idolised her : it was 
not with a wild or unfounded passion, but it was an attachment 
increasing every hour, from an admiration of the purity of her 
miind, and respect for her talents. I did dwell in secret upon the 
prospect of our union. I did hope that success, while it afforded 
the opportunity of our union, might be the means of confirming an 
attachment which misfortune had called forth. I did not look to 
honours for myself — praise I would have asked from the lips of no 
man ; but I would have wished to read in the glow of Sarah's 
countenance that her husband v/as respected. My love, Sarah ! it 
was not thus that I thought to have requited your affection. I did 
hope to be a prop round which your affections might have clung, 
and which would never have been shaken ; but a rude blast has 
snapped it, and they have fallen over a grave.* 

" This is no time for affliction. I have had public motives to 
sustain my mind, and I have not suffered it to sink, but there have 
been moments in my imprisonment when my mind was so sunk 
by grief on her account, that death would have been a refuge. 

" God bless you, my dearest Richard. I am obliged to leave 

off immediately. 

" Robert Emmett." 



* In 1847 a London journal mentioning the death of Miss Curran, at Rome, dechired 
that the lady was " the betrothed of Robert Emmett," and the heroine of Moore's song 
and Irving's touching story. This was an error. It was Amelia, Curran's eldest daughter, 
who thus died at Rome. His youngest daughter, Sarah, had passed away some thirty 
years before. — M. 



356 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

This letter was written at twelve o'clock on tlie day of Mr. 
Emmett's execution,* and tlie firmness and regularity of the origi- 
nal hand-writting contain a striking and affecting proof of the 
little intluence which the approaching event had over his frame. 
The same enthusiasm which allured him to his destiny, enabled 
him to support its utmost rigour. He met his fate with unosten- 
tatious fortitude ; and although few could ever think of justifying 
his projects or regreting their failure, yet his youth, his talents, 
the great respectability of his connexions, and the evident delusion 
of which he was the victim, have excited more general sympathy for 
his unfortunate end, and more forbearance toward his memory, than 
is usually extended to the errors or sufferings of political offenders.f 

* The best account of Emmett's trial is given by Dr. Madden. lie pleaded " Not guilty," 
but made no defence. Nor, in his speech after conviction, did he allude to Plunket. 
G'Grady was Attorney-General, James McClelland was Solicitor General, and it was his 
duty to speak to evidence. But Plunket performed that task — and is accused of having 
volunteered to do it. Neither of the two law olBcials had thought it necessary to speak 
— so clear was the case against Eramett, but Plunket (as one of his own biographers ad- 
mits) " assailed the sad enthusiast, in that form of his deepest suffering, in a theme of 
invective which might well have been spared." It would seem as if Plunket wished to 
show how his own strong liberality had declined down to the Government gauge. In two 
months from that date, Plunket was in oflice as Solicitor-General. — M. 

t In Ireland, the Emmett family have invariably spelled their name with a double t. 
In this country, they have economized, and write Emmet.— Isl. 



OUKRAN'S DOMESTIC AFFAIilS. 357 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Ml'. Curran's domestic afifairs — Foi'ensic eflbrts — Appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland 
— His literary projects — Letter to Mr. M'Nally — Account of a visit to Scotland in a letter 
to Miss Piiilpot— Letter to Mr. Leslie— Letters to Mr. Hetherington. 

[This seems to be the proper place to introduce a notice of Mr. 
Curran's domestic relations, which it was very pardonable in his 
son, to have avoided any mention of. His two other biographers, 
Phillips and O'Regan, were not in a situation to be affected by 
such delicacy, and have spoken what they knew. Phillips says: — 

"There is no doubt there were times when he was subject to 
the most extreme despondency; but the origin of this was visible 
enough, without having recourse to any mysterious inquiries. It 
was the case with him as it is with every person whose spirits are 
apt to be occasionally excited — the depression is at intervals in 
exact proportion. Like a bow overstrained, the mind relaxes in 
consequence of the exertion. He was naturally extremely sensi- 
tive — domestic misfortunes rendered his home unhappy — he flew 
for a kind of refuge into public life; and the political ruin of his 
country, leaving him without an object of private enjoyment or of 
pati'iotic hope, flung him upon his own heart-devouring reflec- 
tions. He was at those times a striking instance of his own 
remark upon the disadvantages attendant upon too refined a sensi- 
bility. 'Depend upon it, my dear friend,' said he, 'it is a serious 
misfortune in life to have a mind more sensitive or more cultiva- 
ted than common; it naturally elevates its possessor into a region 
which he must be doomed to find nearly uninhabited P It was a 
deplorable thing to see him, in the decline of life, when visited by this 
constitutional melancholy. I have not unfrequently accompanied 



358 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

him in his walks upon such occasions, almost at the hour of mid- 
night. He had gardens attached to the Priory, of which he was 
particularly fond; and into these gardens, when so affected, no 
matter at what hour, he used to ramble. It was then almost 
impossible to divert his mind froin themes of sadness. The gloom 
of his own thoughts discolored everything, and from calamity to 
calamity he would wander on, seeing in the future nothing for 
hope, and in the past nothing but disappointment. You could 
not recognize in him the same creature who, but an hour prece- 
ding, had 'set the table in a roar' — his gibes, his merriment, his 
flashes of wit, were all extinguished. He had a favorite little 
daughter, who was a sort of musical prodigy. She had died at 
the age of twelve, and he had her buried in the midst of a small 
grove just adjoining this garden. A little rustic memorial was 
raised over her, and often and often have I seen him, the tears 
'chasing each other' down his cheeks, point to his daughter's 
monument, and 'wish to be wdth her, and at rest.' Such, at 
times, was the man before whose very look not merely gravity, 
but sadness has often vanished — who has given birth to more 
enjoyment, and uttered more wit, than perhaps any of his contem- 
poraries in any country — who had in him materials for social 
happiness such as we can not hope again to see combined in any 
one; and whose death has cast, I fear, a permanent eclipse upon 
the festivities of his circle. Yet even these melancholy hours 
were not without their moral. They proved the nothingness of 
this world's gifts — the worse than inutility of this world's attain- 
ments; they forced the mind into involuntary reflection; they 
showed a fellow-creature enriched with the finest natural endow- 
ments, having acquired the most extensive reputation, without a 
pecuniary want or a professional rival, yet w^eighed down with a 
constitutional depression that left the poorest wealthy and the 
humblest happy in the comparison. Nor were they Avithout a 
kind of mournful interest : he spoke as under such circumstances 
no human being but himself could have spoken — his mind was so 



HIS DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 359 

veiy strangely constituted; such an odd medley of the romantic 
and the humorous; now soaring into regions of light and sublim- 
ity for illustrations, and now burrowing under ground for such 
ludicrous and whimsical examples; drawing the most strange 
inferences from causes so remote, and accompanied at times with 
gestures so comic, tha't the smile and the tear often irresistibly met 
during the recital. Perhaps, after one of those scenes of misery, 
when he had walked himself tired and wept himself tearless, he would 
again return into the house, where the picture of some friend, or 
the contingency of some accident, recalling an early or festive 
association would hurry him into the very extreme of cheerful- 
ness! His spirits rose — his wit returned — the jest, and the tale, 
and the anecdote pushed each other aside in an almost endless 
variety, and day dawned upon him, the happiest, the pleasantest, 
and the most fascinating of companions. The friends whom he 
admitted to intimacy may perhaps recognize him, even in this 
hurried sketch, as he has often appeared to them in the hospitali- 
ties of the Priory; but, alas! the look all eloquent — the eye of 
fire — the tongue of harmony, the exquisite address that gave a 
charm to everything, and spell-bound those who heard him, are 
gone for ever!" 

The domestic misfortunes which rendered his home unhappy, 
are thus mentioned by O'Regan ; — 

" Mr. Curran had been married very early to a Miss Creagh, of 
the county of Cork, with whom for many years he lived very 
happily. She was of an ancient and highly esteemed family, in 
the neighbourhood of Newmarket. His union with this lady was 
founded on affection ; her fortune, though small, yet enabled him 
to pursue his career of study and ambition, and took off many 
difficulties to which his youth might otherwise have been exposed. 
He built on a glen in his native country a tasty and rather an 
handsome cottage, which he called the Priory. This became the 



360 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

residence of his family, and the occasional resort of many of the 
first men of his time and of his country, while his yet limited 
fortune did not permit a suitable residence in the capital. From 
this connection commenced under the happiest auspices of mutual 
aftection, afterwards sprang the sorest tortures of his life : it was 
here began the tempest to his soul. He had many children by 
this marriage ; and so unhappy became his mind by the dishonour 
which afterwards ensued, that it rent asunder the finest charities 
of the heart ; and for ever afterwards were broken up those great 
ties and ligaments, by which nature binds the savage and the sage 
in delicious bondage to the so^•ereignty of this protecting con- 
trivance. Yet, by permitting his mind to dwell too ardently on 
this domestic and deplorable calamity, he appears to have suftered 
under its influence, and to have permitted his own peace to be 
poisoned. These matters had a powerful re-action on his own 
happiness ; and, thus swung from his moorings, he seemed never 
after to have had any safe anchorage to ride upon. It is true his 
vivacity, though impaired, was not extinguished ; it burst forth 
like gleams of light, and vanished ; its fiery track left a burning 
ember after it. The moral aliment by which he was accustomed 
to be nourished was gone, or, if it remained, it did so remain, but 
to sour upon his stomach ; and to the morbid state of the affec- 
tions of the heart, succeeded a distracting and a malady of soul, 
for which society gave but the peace of its presence. Such was 
the distress, so deep and so afflicting, that with all the elasticity 
of his temperament, it took him years to consent to be concerned 
in actions of that nature which unbound his own wounds ; and, in 
his own words, ' let in the brine of the salt sea through the chinks 
of a vessel, not yet sufficiently staunched or seasoned to keep it 
out.' At length, however, he conquered those sensations; and 
we find him the advocate in the famous case of the Rev. Charles 
Massy, against the Marquis of Headford, tried at Ennis, in the 
county of Clare, in July 1804, where damages were laid at ^240,000 
and iBl 0,000 were recovered, — a tribute to eloquence; but how 



MRS. CURRAN. 361 

can money heal a wounded spirit ? This he spoke of as a gigan- 
tic victory over his own feelings; and, in this trial, the philosopher 
might have traced the history of human suffering amidst the most 
glowing eloquence ; he could have deduced what might have sup- 
plied the moral chair with maxims and illustrations, fresh from 
the mint of nature, by perceiving the agonies of two sufferers 
identified in the client and in the advocate. Here he had nothing 
to dramatize, nothing unreal. He had but to spread upon the 
canvas the picture of woe familiar to his own sufferings : he did 
so ; and if the reporter (the editor of this collection) were faithful, 
or fortunate to preserve the genuine features of the figure, such 
might have been placed among the works of the first masters : but 
to those who heard him, and felt the effect of his overwhelming 
eloquence, to such it was as electric, and as affecting a piece of 
pathos, as ever yet was addressed to human feelings : it bore down 
every thing before it ; and he who wrote was often suspended in 
his labours ; and those who heard it were entranced and amazed. 
Mr. Curran was much flattered on hearing that it drew tears from 
the eyes of our gracious Queen ^ on the reading of it.f But, had 

* Cliarlotte ; wife of George III.— M. 

t Mr. Phillips states that a few years after this speech had been delivered, Mr. Curran 
was introduced, through the jocularity of a common friend, to the noble defendant, in 
St. James's Street. It is a mistake to suppose, as has been asserted, that he declined all 
advocacy in actions of criminal conversation from the period of his own domestic calamity 
down to that of the trial for Lord Headford. The fact is, in the very year preceding, he 
obtained one thousand pounds damages in the case of Pentland against Clarke. This 
case is not reported in the printed volume, but it was tried before Lord Avonmore, the 
very same judge who presided on the trial of Mr. Curran's own action. The chief argu- 
ment against him on that lamentable occasion was his alleged inconstancy; and there is 
a most curious passage in the speech before me, in which he takes occasion to anticipate 
that ground of defense, and leaves his own opinions on a subject on which, whether 
justly or unjustly, he was supposed to be so much interested. This speech is very little 
known. — " There is a species of defense, which perhaps the gentlemen on the other side 
may attempt to set up — I mean that of recrimination; and I have been led to think that 
acts of this kind proved against the husband ought not to prevent him from recovering 
damages for the seduction of his wife ; for the consequence arising from illicit connec- 
tions is widely different with respect to the husband and the wife : casual revelry and 
immorality in the husband is not supposed to cast an indelible disgrace upon the wife, 
and can not defraud the children of their property, by introducing a spurious offspring 

16 



362 LIFE OF CUKKAX. 

she heard it delivered, the native notes of Kotzebue would have 
been, in comparison, but mock heroic. Not quite apprised how- 
Queens feel upon these occasions, certain it is, tljat her humble 
subjects, the Ennis ladies, enjoyed it in transports, and his name 
resounded throuo-h the rocks and o-roves of Edenvale. 

"In tlie action for criminal conversation, brought by Mr. 
Curran against the Rev. Mr. Sandys, (not Sandes), Lord Clare 
was supposed not to be an indifferent spectator. It was on this 
occasion Mr. Saurin's talents were first drawn forth in a statement 
for defendant, at once solid, luminous, and vehement. Lord 
Avonmore, the early patron and friend of Mv. Curran, tried the 
case ; and, in its progress, many interesting and affecting scenes 
took place ; the private feelings of the man, his known partiality 
for the plaintiff", though occasionally interrupted by some small 
jealousies, the pity for his sufferings, frequently burst forth in 
some of the finest touches ever witnessed ; but the sense of justice, 
the pride and purity of his mighty mind, quickly deposed the 
brief authority of the most generous feelings ; and the judge, 
resuming his great functions, shook off" the dew-drops from the 
lion's mane. By the sovereignty of that character it was, that 
the judge alone presided. On his trial, as wxll of men as of the 
case, Mr. Plunket, (to whom Lord Avonmore had been a friend, 
and whose infoncy had been protected since the loss of his father 
by that excellent nobleman, was employed on the part of Mr. 
Sandys. Amidst the clashing of opposite arguments, and many 
animated contentions with Lord Avonmore sustained for a long 
time in undecided conflicts, Mr. Plunket rallied with fresh forces, 

to which the infidelity of the wife may lead. ' Errors of this kind in the husband may not 
arise from an actual turpitude of heart ; he may have committed errors of this kind, 
and yet be a good father ; he may be a good citizen, he may be a good husband, not- 
withstanding he may not be entirely without blemish. I am not speaking of a constant 
scene of riot and excessive debauchery, but of acts which, though they are to be con- 
demned, it is possible to atone for by subsequent good conduct. Could the ill conduct 
of the husband entail upon the wife the character of a prostitute? No. But the conse- 
quences resulting from the conduct of the wife are of a very diflferent nature indeed." — M. 



PROMOTION TO THE BEXCH. 363 

and drew upon those great stores, with which nature has so abun- 
dantly supplied him : sometimes playing off the light artillery of 
that wit, which his pride so chastens, that it lies back like that 
recondite matter in animal nature which is produced for susten- 
ance, but upon great and important accasions ; sometimes riding 
on the wiry edge of irony, his own appropriate figure ; and which 
nor Swift nor Lucian ever possessed in a richer vein. In the 
indulgence of some of those sallies thrown off in the impetuosity 
of feeling, the ardent sensibility of the joatron, the friend and the 
judge, kindled, and rapidly rising into one of those impassioned 
blazes, to v/hich his great nature was subject, he burst forth into 
this short exclamation, et tu fill — and thou also, my son. The 
effect w^as overpowering on Mr. Plunket ; the sense of gratitude , 
the reverence for the venerable judge ; the obligations imposed on 
him by the duty he owed his client, and other emotions of a 
nobler kind, became, by their varied combinations, irresistible ; 
while he, overwhelmed by the impetuosity of mingled, yet contra- 
dictory forces, muffling his face in his mantle, sunk down, and was 
dissolved in tears — tears more creditable to him, than all that 
eloquence, less popular than argumentative, of which he of most 
men, may be truly said to be one of the greatest masters. 

" Mr. Curran obtained a verdict, and damages, which the defen- 
dant was never afterwards called upon to pay ; he was scarcely 
ever heard of after ; whilst the unhappy woman, sustained by the 
bounty of the afflicted husband, made the best atonement by a 
conduct ever after without reproach or censure. This event dis- 
coloured the stream of his future life ; and, from the change in his 
domestic habits, furnished many topics for unkind observation. 
It is certain he did not refuse to her the consolation of a requested 
interview, when she lay on the bed of sickness, and, as she thought, 
of death. If he did not totally forget the injuries he had suffered, 
he generously consented to see her, which she sought as a con- 
solation, and which to him was the severest trial. This occurred 
in London some years after the action : but a message, announc- 



364 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

ing the certainty of lier recovery, made this melancholy visit 
imnecessary."] 

Upon the death of Mr. Pitt, * [1806] the political party with 
whom Mr. Curran had so long been acting- having come into office, 
he was appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and a member 
of the Privy Council, f With this appointment he was dissatisfied 

* In the interval between 1S03 and the period of his elevation to the bench (1S06) jMr. 
Curran farther distinguished himself at the bnr m the prosecution of Ensign .John 
Castley, for conspiracy to murder the Rev. AV. Led wich, a Roman Catholic Clergyman, 
(Feb. 1S04,) and obtained a conviction for assault; in the case of Massey against the 
Marquis of Headfort (July 1S04) and in the case of Mr. Justice Johnson (February, 1805.) 
His speeches upon those occasions are among his most vigorous efforts ; but ample speci- 
mens of his forensic eloquence having been already introduced, the reader is referred to 
the published collection. — C. [It was in his speech, made on Feb. 4, 1805, for Judge John- 
son, that Curran introduced the well-known, and already-quoted, eulogium on Lord Avon- 
more, with a touching allusion to their former friendship.] 

t Upon this occasion the Irish bar convened a meeting, and voted the following address 
to Mr. Curran : — 

"Sir — In your recent appointment to a high and dignified situation, the first pride of 
the Irish bar feels itself gratified, that independent spirit, preeminent talents, and inflexi- 
ble integrity have recommended their possessor to the royal favour, and procured his ad- 
vancement to the bench of justice. 

" Yes, Sir, we trust that the lustre which shone upon your distinguished progress as an 
advocate will beam with a milder but more useful influence from the bench ; and the un- 
biased, impartial, and upright judge will be found in the person who exalted the charac- 
ter of the Irish bar, by his eloquence, and uniformly supported the rights and privileges 
of an honourable profession." 

MR. CURRAn's answer. 

" Gentlemen" — I thank you from my heart for this proof of your confidence and affec- 
tion. The appi-oving opinion of so enlightened and independent a body as the Irish bar 
would be a most valuable reward of merit much superior to mine, which I am conscious 
has gone little beyond a disposition, but I trust an honest and ardent disposition, so to 
act in my public and professional characters, as not to be altogether unworthy of the 
name of an Irishman of that disposition. I receive your kind commendation with pride. 
I feel that probity of intention is all that we can be responsible for. 

" I am peculiarly gratified by the flattering attestation you are pleased to bestow on 
my endeavours to support the privileges of our profession. They are vitally and insepar- 
ably connected with the enjoyment of constitutional liberty and the effectual administra- 
tion of justice. The more active part which I may have taken in the defence of these 
privileges I bequeath to you ; but be assured that I bring with me the most perfect convic- 
tion, that in continuing to maintain them, I shall co-operate with you in the discharge of 
one of the most important duties that can bind us to our country." 



TKEAT3»IENT BY MK. PONSONBY. 365 

at the time, and he never became entirely reconciled to it. It 
imposed upon his mind a necessity of unaccustomed labour and 
unaccustomed restraint, to which opposite habits of so many years 
did not allow him easily to submit. 

[O'Reagan says : " The truth is w^ell known, that Mr. Curran's 
practice was not so much in the courts of equity. This has been 
partly accounted for already ; the minuter details of practice he was 
not well acquainted with, and at the time of life when he was 
appointed to that office, tlie character of the mind had acquired a 
stiflf and unbending rigour unfit for pursuits which to him were ever 
uncongenial. Forms were not habitual to his taste, or to the eleva- 
tion of his mind ; its aspirations were loftier. Of forms he once 
observed that they were bullet moulds : if once, said he, you have 
them, you may cast on ad infinitum. He should have condescended 
to them, however, and because he did not do so, and because his 
mind was accustomed to the common, criminal, and constitutional 
codes, he was not in his proper element in the Rolls. He unwill- 
ingly yielded to be placed there.] 

Whatever might be its dignity or emolument, it had no political 
consequence ; and therefore, to him, who had acted such a part in 
the history of his country, it seemed rather like a compensation 
for former services, than as a means of taking that honourable 
share to which he felt himself entitled, in an administration that 
promised such benefits to Ireland. These sentiments of disgust, 
in which he perhaps indulged to an unreasonable excess, disturbed 
the friendship which had so long subsided between him and the 
late Mr. George Ponsonby, whom Mr. Curran considered as having, 
by his acquiescence in his appointment to the Rolls, attended to 
his nominal interests at the expense of his feelings and his repu- 
tation. In this opinion, how^ever encouraged by some subsequent 
circumstances, it is due to the memory of Mr. Ponsonby to state, 
that Mr. Curran was mistaken. Mr. Ponsonby made no such in- 
tentional sacrifice of his friend. He imagined that he was observ- 
ing, with the strictest honour, the spirit of every former engage- 



366 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

ment, althoiigli it cannot be too mucli lamented that lie should 
have withheld all explanation on the subject, until a mutual aliena- 
tion had taken place, which no explanation could recall. The 
impression was never removed from Mr. Curran's mind, that he 
had, upon this occasion, been unkindly treated ; but it is pleasing 
to observe, that his resentment was softened and finally subdued 
by the recollection of his former regard and respect. He visited 
Mr. Ponsonby in his last illness, and after his lamented death 
took every opportunity of dwelling upon his virtues, and attesting 
the clainjs, which the long and disinterested services of himself 
and his family had given their name to the gratitude of their 
country. 

[Mr. Curran felt himself driven into the pul)lication of a letter 
to Mr. Grattan, in which he shewed that he had full grounds for 
being dissatisfied with the manner in which his party, and par- 
ticularly Mr. George Ponsonby, had treated him. Passages of 
this letter, explaining his position, can scarcely be out of place 
here — particularly as the document itself had a limited circulation 
at first, and has long been out of print. Mr. Curran says : 

"You will remember the state of Ireland in 1779; and the 
necessity under which we found ourselves, forming some bond of 
honourable connexion, by which the co-operation of even a small 
number might be secured, in making some effort to stem that tor- 
rent, which was carrying every thing before it. For that purpose 
our little party was formed ; — it consisted of yourself the Duke of 
Leinster, (that excellent Irishman) the late Lord Ponsonby, Mr. 
B. Daly, ISIr. G. Ponsonby, Mr. Forbes, myself, and some very few 
others. It may not be for us to pronounce encomiums upon it, but 
we are entitled to say, that had it been as successful as it was 
honest, we might now look back to it with some degree of satis- 
faction. The reason of my adverting to it is, that, under the 
sanction of that party, and in its presence, it was agreed between 
Mr. G. Ponsonby and me, that if any circumstances should arise 



36 T 

under Avliicli it might be honourably open to us to accept office, 
it should be on the terms of his taking the first, and my taking 
the second place in the course of professional advancement. Upon 
the basis of this com.pact, which was always publicly known, and 
adopted by Lord Fitzwilliam, in 1795, Mr. G. Ponsonby was then 
nominated to the ofiice of Sohcitor General. The completion of 
that arrangement was prevented by the change of the Irish Admin- 
istration; the compact itself continued with increased force, (if 
hy the continued fidelity of observance, compact can be susceptible 
of accessional obligation) till the late change in 180G; it was again 
acted upon by the parties to it. On that occasion I was the only 
interested member of that party that remained in Ireland. I did 
not write to any of my friends then in London ; not to Lord Pon- 
sonby; not even to you. I knew your zeal for my interest; I knew 
the friendship and purity of Lord Ponsonby — I was sensible of the 
warm protection of Mr. Fox, to which I had no claim, save what 
might be suggested to a noble and generous spirit, like his, by my 
conduct as a public m^an ; I knew also, the protection my interests 
would have found in Lord Moira, Lord Erskine, or Lord Ilowick, had 
such protection been necessary. I felt no solicitude for myself; I 
remained at home; the event justified my confidence; Mr. G. Pon- 
sonby accepted the Seals ; a proof, of itself, that I must have been 
appointed to the next attainable situation. The next situation could 
be no other than the office of Attorney-General ; it was the only 
place in the power of the new Administration to vacate ; from its 
official rank in the Government it was the natural passage to that 
place on the King's Bench, to which, as next in professional 
advancement, I had a right to succeed. But on this fact I was 
not left to conjecture. I was apprised by letter from you, and also 
Mr. G. Ponsonby, that my interests had been taken care of ; Mr. 
G. Ponsonby communicated the same to a relation of mine, then 
in London ; directing him to inform me that my place as Attor- 
ney-General was fixed, and that my coming over would be but 
unnecessary trouble." 



o68 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 

The Duke of Bedford, was sent over as Viceroy to Ireland, and 
on Mr. Ponsonby's appointment as Chancellor, he assured Mr. Cur- 
ran that every thing would be done for him to his satisfaction. 
But instead of getting the aj^pointment of Irish Attorney-General, 
(the stepping stone to the Chief Justiceship, for which, as a com- 
mon lawyer, he was well qualified, Mr. Curran found that Mr. 
Plunket was to be continued in that office. After some delay, he 
saw the Viceroy, who told him that the Mastership of the Rolls 
was reserved for him. What follows can best be related in Mr. 
Curran's own words : 

" You may easily judge of my feelings on this communication ; 
but it was the first time I had ever seen the Duke of Bedford ; I 
had no shadow of claim upon his Grace ; he was not the person 
to whom I could complain, that I was humbled or ill-treated ; I 
barely said that " that I was grateful to his Grace for the courtesy 
of the communication ;" and retired with an almost decided pur- 
pose to decline the appointment. This substitution I considered a 
direct departure from the compact with Mr. G. Ponsonby, and 
accompanied by the aggravation of withholding that consultation 
and explanation, without which, and without my own express 
consent, I ought not to have been so disposed of. As to the place 
itself, it was the last I should have chosen ; it imposed upon me a 
change of all my habits of life ; it forced my mind to a new 
course of thinking, and into new modes of labour, and that, 
increased labour ; it removed me from that intellectual exercise 
which custom and temper had rendered easy and pleasant; it 
excluded me from the enjoyment of the honest gratification of an 
oflScial share in an administration which I then thought would 
have consisted principally, if not altogether, of the tried friends of 
Ireland. When the party with which I had acted so fairly, had, 
after so long a proscription, come at last to their natural place, / 
did not expect to have been stuck into a window, a spectator of the 
procession. From the station, v/hich I then held at the Bar, to 



MOTIVES TO ACCEPTATION. 869 

accept the neutralized situation of the Rolls, appeared to me a 
descent, and not an elevation : — It had no allurement of Avealth, 
for diminished as my income had been by the most remorseless 
persecution for years, by which I was made to expiate the crime 
of not being an alien to my country, by treachery, or by birth, it 
was still abundant when compared Avith my occasions, and was 
likely to continue so, long as the occasions should last. 

"To this intended refusal, however, my friends in Ireland 
thought there were strong objections; they thought it would look 
like an accusation of the party at large, to the great majority of 
whom I had reason to be more attached than ever — they urged 
other inducements unnecessary to detail — and which I thought 
worthy my attention. There remained a still superior motive to 
decide me : to have yielded to resentment, or disgust, and refused 
the offered situation, might be to carry disturbance and irritation 
to the bed of a dying friend ; I knew the untemporising nature of 
Lord Ponsonby, where he thought his honour concerned, and 
I saw that the whole arrangement of the administration for 
Ireland, as far as it depended upon him, might be dissolved, if he 
thought me ill-treated ; I had a similar apprehension from the 
part you yourself would pursue upon such an occasion ; and I 
could not but see, that if you and Lord Ponsonby were to with- 
draw your support from the Irish Administration, that unhappy 
country could have little to hope from any new order of things. 
I resolved therefore to submit, and to do so with an appearance 
of as much good humour as I could affect." 

He submitted, therefore, rather than break up his " party." He 
saw Mr. Ponsonby, who informed him that Sir Michael Smith, 
(then Master of the Rolls) should be " treated with on the subject 
of his resignation," and Mr. Curran had the mortification of seeing 
that instead of coming into the stipulated situation " by an undis- 
puted claim of right (?) and without the burthen of one shilling 
expense to the country," he was flung upon the precarious chance 

16* ' 



370 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

of a place, which if achieved at all could be obtained only by a 
charge on the public, and rendered additionally disgusting to him- 
self by the appearance of a job. He says : 

"At last, after delays perhaps not easy to be avoided, but 
certainly affording ample time for the triumph of my enemies, and 
the vexation of my friends, both of whom looked upon me as 
insulted and abandoned, that treaty took place, without any 
participation of mine, and without the remotest hint that it could 
involve any stipulation and guarantee on my part. I was informed 
by Mr. G. Ponsonby that the arrangement was completed : That 
Sir Michael was to resign on the terms of receiving the retiring 
salary ; and also, upon the promise by the government, that his 
deputy Mr Ridge way, should get a place of 600Z. per annum, if such 
place should become vacant before the 25 th of Marcli ensuing, 
until which time no addition could be made to the pension list ; 
and if no such vacancy should occur before that day, he should 
then be placed on the pension establishment for 500/. a year, for 
his life, and that a provision by pension, to the amount altogether 
of 300Z. a year, was also to be made for three inferior officers of 
Sir Michael's Court. 

" Had any idea of any stipulation whatever on my part been 
suggested, feeling as I did, I could not have borne it — for, see how 
it would have stood : on my part, it would have been a direct 
purchase of a judical office. The purchase could not be made 
good out of its own income, which could last only to my death or 
resignation : for these annuities v.ere for the lives of four other 
persons, and worth at least 8000/. ; ■ with these 8000Z. therefore, I 
was eventually to charge my private fortune ; for this sum I was 
to buy the disappointment of an expectation, which I thought 
certain, and to commit a breach of the law and the constitution. 

"But if I could have dispensed with the matter of purity, 
another question remained : Was this change between my pro- 
fessional and judicial situation so to be obtained, worth the sum of 



HIS DEFENCE. 371 

8000/. ? There would have been, therefore, two previous questions 
to decide, a question of crime, and a question of prudence : if I 
had consulted a moralist upon the one and a Jew upon the other, 
what would have been the answer ? I would not therefore have 
submitted for a moment, I ^vould have snapped the thread in such 
a manner as would have made it impossible to splice it, and have 
felt pleasure in being restored to my liberty." 

Five months elapsed before Sir Michael Smith resigned the 
Rolls. Mr. Curran was then appointed. Time passed on. No 
place was given, as promised, to Mr. Ridgeway. The Ministry 
fell to pieces, by the death of Mr. Fox, and finally broke up in 
April 1807. No pensions had been granted .to Mr. Ridgeway and 
the three other officers of Sir Michael Smith's court, and it was 
then endeavored to throw upon Mr. Curran the liabilities of the 
non-performance of a promise to Sir Michael Smith, actually 
made without his consent, or even knowledge. He refused to 
allow his salary as judge to be burthened wdth the payment of 
800/. a year for life to the deputy, trainbearer, tipstaff, and crier 
of his predecessor. He adds : 

" I some time after, heard that Mr. G. Ponsonby had made a 
grant of 800/. per annum to Mr. Ridgeway, and those three 
inferior officers, and this act has been represented to the public as 
occasioned by w^ant of gratitude to Mr. G. Ponsonby, my benefac- 
tor, and of personal honor as a member of the party ; as to the 
first part of the charge, you well know how unfounded it is ; thank 
God, I have had many friends ; I am now^ addressing the most 
valued of them ; but, in the sense intended, I never had a benefac- 
tor : If I had entertained any views of ambition, I could have 
been lifted only by a stronger wing than my own ; but my journey 
has been on the ground, and performed on foot, and I was able to 
walk without the crutches of patronage. As to the allegation of 
my breach of just or honorable engagement, the fact of sucli 



372 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

engagement must have been witli the knowledge of the Duke of 
Bedford, of Mr. G. Ponsonby, and of Sir Michael Smith ; and I 
aver that I never was required to take any part in guaranteeing 
to Sir Michael Smith that agreement of government, or of being 
liable to him in any event for the performance ; and that I never 
did, directly or indirectly, make any promise on the subject ; and 
that I know not of any act whatsoever, which, to the best of my 
judgment, after the maturest consideration, can warrant the 
allegations that have been made against me. Of these allegations, 
I now feel it necessary to take some farther notice : I well knew 
hoAV incapable Mr. G. Ponsonby must be of making them ; if he 
had heard them, he had too much honour to repel them with 
indignation ; it is therefore the more necessary for me to advert 
to them. It is said, the substitution, of which I complained, was 
for my benefit : I answer, first, that it was a question upon which 
I alone was competent to decide ; a question for the feelings of a 
gentleman ; not the calculation of a notary public. Had it been 
referred to me, as I think it ought, I should have seen, as the 
public did see, and did say, that it went to sink me, by excluding 
me from all political confidence. Between such discredit and 
pecuniary compensation, no honorable mind could balance. But 
the assertion itself is untrue in fact. The place which I hold was 
as inferior to that of Attorney-General, in point of pecuniary 
emolument, as of political consequence. The professional and 
ofiicial income I should have derived from the latter, could not 
have been less than double the amount of what I now enjoy. I 
should have made no deduction for any prccariousness of tenure, 
for never was there an administration less likely to be changed. 
That income, therefore, I should have counted upon as certain, 
till I passed to the chief seat on the King's Bench ; a situation of 
equal certainty with that of the Polls ; of far more dignity ; of, I 
believe twice the annual value ; far more congenial with my 
habits and temper ; which I should have filled with, perhaps, more 
advantage to the public ; certainly, with much greater to myself 



A EETEOSPECT. 



373 



And to that place, the office of x\ttorney-General would have led 
by the course of ordinary usage. And to that place it must have 
led me, because in no other way could the compact have been 
finally fulfilled. I say, then, it was not for my benefit ; and I say 
further, it was for the benefit of Mr. G. Ponsonby himself; as, 
without some arrangement in which I should acquiesce, his own 
compact must have been an insurmountable bar to his acceptance 
of office. I say, also, that if the compact with me had been 
observed, the arrangement with Sir Michael Smith could never 
have existed ; nor of course any person be called upon to compen- 
sate for its non-performance. And yet the charge against me is, 
that having received a part payment of a debt, I was bound in 
honour, out of that payment, to defray the expense of the disap- 
pointment which prevented my receiving the whole." 

Further on, he thus records his claim for consideration from his 
" party." 

" I came into Parliament at a very early period ; having no 
hereditary fortune, I could have little property. During the whole 
time of my sitting there, I never deviated from those principles 
which have bound us together ; I continued, from Parliament to 
Parliament, to come in at my own expense. It is apparent how 
heavy such a burthen must have been. I was not like other men, 
who came into Parliament without any expense ; who had great 
family interest to support them ; I had not the same means nor 
the same inducements. To this, perhaps, it might be objected, 
that at my first coming into the House of Commons I did accept 
a seat from a particular friend ; and the fact is so ; but it is also 
true, that having soon difiered on political subjects with that gen- 
tleman, I purchased a seat for a friend of his, there being then no 
way of vacating ; though, to do him justice, he endeavoured to 
dissuade me from it ; having given me the seat on the express 
condition of perfect freedom on my part. From the first, I adopt- 
ed your principles, and on those we acted until the forming of our 



874 LIFE OF CrREAN. 

party, IVSG. In the mere personal compact between Mr. G. Pon- 
sonby and me, you (Mr. Grattan) could have no interest ; for it 
was known that you would not accept any emolument of office. 
The compact itself \vrs, not a stipulation for gain, but simply a 
bond of cohesion in the faithful discharge of that agreement. I 
made no compromise with power ; I had the merit of provoking 
and despising the personal malice of every man in Ireland who 
was the known enemy of the country. Without the walls of the 
courts of justice, my character was pursued by the most persever- 
ing slander ; and within those walls, though I was too strong to 
be beaten down by any judicial malignity — it was not so with my 
clients ; and my consequent losses in mere professional income, 
have never been estimated at less, as you must have often heard, 
than 50,0001. ; and yet for these losses, it seems I am to be con- 
sidered as compensated. It is with no little pain that I descend 
to such paltry topics, but when accusation is vile and grovelling, 
what dignity can be expected in defence ? It seems the privilege 
of vulgar calumny, that the victim must be humbled by the one, 
if he be not disgraced by the other." • 

Mr. Curran concluded his letter to Mr. Grattan by requesting 
him to communicate Avith Mr. Ponsonby (then receiving 4000 Z. 
a year, as pension for having been Chancellor for less than a 
twelvemonth), and ascertain whether he had any claims on Mr. 
Curran, as regards the pensions to Sir M. Smitli's ex-officers. 
If he had, Mr. Curran ofiered to refer it to Mr. Grattan, Lord 
Moira, Lord Grey, Lord Erskine, Lord Holland, or Lord Pon- 
sonby, or any other friend or friends that might be appointed. 
Lords Moira, Grey, and Holland were accordingly named as 
arbitrators. The matter remained in dispute until May 1810, 
when it dropped, on Mr. Ponsonby's declaring that he had 
nothing to be referred ; and that, therefore, it was for Mr. Curran 
to open the case, which Mr. Curran, in the absence of his friends, 
declined doing^. Very properly Mr. Ponsonby, not Mr. Curran, 



ME-REY V. POWEE. 375 

•was saddled vrltli the payment of Sir M. Smith's ex-officers ; ^vhiie 
in power, he might have obtained employment or provision for 
them, and, not having done so, suffered for his default or neg- 
lect. 

The fact is, Mr. Ponsonby, who had aristocratic connexions 
(his brother and cousin were Peers), was made Chancellor by the 
English party, who disliked Curran, the maker of his own fame 
and fortune, as being " too Irish." Mr. Ponsonby would have 
cast aside Mr. Curran if he dared, and alleged that his private 
character would not justify his being made Attorney-General. 
That this assertion was untrue, may be judged from the fact, that 
he was made Master of the Rolls — the second equity judge in 
Ireland. Mr. Grattan is said, when the " party " were puzzled 
what to do with Mr. Curran, to have suggested, with most unbe- 
coming levity, that he should be made an Irish bishop. This is 
recorded ]>y Mr. Phillips. 

Mr. Davis states the professional opinion of the time, when he 
declares that " Curran Avas unsuited to the technicalities and 
minute business of the Rolls. He had neither knowledge nor 
taste for it. He felt this, and the moment he could rise was one he 
anxiously looked to. It may be guessed that his orders or details 
were not very sound nor convenient. The only memorable deci- 
sion he made was that in Merry v. Power." 

The facts of this case may be stated thus. In 1804, Mary 
Power made her will, bequeathing a considerable portion of her 
property to the Rev. Dr. John Power (Roman Catholic bishop of 
Waterford) and others, in trust for charitable purposes. Mr. 
Merry, her brother, a merchant in Spain, was her next of kin, and 
died intestate. Her son administered, and brought a suit in the 
Spiritual Court to set aside the will as unduly obtained and as 
disposing a large property to " Papists," and for superstitious pur- 
poses. His application as an administrator, pendente lite, was 
refused. He then filed a bill praying that the effects be brought 
into Court by Dr. Power, the acting executor of Mary Power, and 



876 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

her counsel, contending that the will was caused by fraud, by Dr. 
Power, whom he contumeliously described as " one John Power, a 
Popish priest " On the other hand, it wa sargued that there was 
no color for impeaching the transaction ; that the bequests had 
been most praiseworthy — that the Court had already affirmed the 
legality of the trusts, — and that it would be unprecedented for a 
Court to interfere, as was prayed, before the defendant had 
answered, or havd even time to put in an answer. 

In giving judgment, the Master of the Rolls (Mr. Curran), said, 
on the allegation that the will was obtained by fraud practised by 
" one John Power :" 

" I see no semblance of fact to sustain such a charge. Who 
does this ' one John Power ^ a Popish priest^^ turn out to be ? I 
find he is a Catholic clergyman — a doctor in divinity, a titular 
bishop in the diocese of Waterford. And yet I am now pressed 
to believe this gentleman has obtained this will by fraud. Ev^ery 
fact now appearing repels this charge ; I cannot but say that tho 
personal character of the person accused, repels it still more 
strongly. Can I be brought, on grounds like those now before 
me, to believe, that a man, having the education of a scholar, the 
habits of a relio-ious life, and vested with so hio-h a character in 
the Ministry of the Gospel, could be capable of so detestable a 
profanation as is flung upon him ? Can I forget that he is a 
Christian bishop, clothed not in the mere authority of a sect, but 
clothed in the indelible character of the Episcopal order; suffering no 
diminution from his supposed heterodoxy, nor drawing any increase 
or confirmation from the merits of his conformity, should he think 
proper to renounce what we call the errors of faith ? Can I 
bring my mind on so slight, or rather no grounds, to believe, that 
he could so trample under his feet all the impressions of that edu- 
cation, of those habits, and of that high rank in the sacred minis- 
try of the Gospel, which he holds, as to sink to the odious impiety 
imputed to him ? Can I bring myself to believe such a man, at 
the dying bed of his fellow-creature, would be capable v/ith one 



CHARITY. 377 

liand of presenting tlie cross before lier uplifted eye, and with the 
other, of basely thieving from her those miserable dregs of this 
world, of which his perfidious tongue was employed in teaching 
her a Christian's estimate ? I do not believe it ; on the contrary, 
I am (as far as it belongs to me in this interlocutory way, to judge 
of the fact) as perfectly convinced that the conduct of Doctor 
Power was what it ought to be, as I am that the testatrix is 
dead." 

On the allegation that it was a foolish bequest to superstition 
and Popish uses, he said that, on examination, he had found the 
object of these bequests to be to provide shelter and comfortable 
support for poor helpless females; and clothes, and food, and 
instruction, for poor orphan children. 

" How can we behold such acts, without regarding them as 
forming a claim to, as springing from a consciousness of immor- 
tality ? In all ages the hour of death has been considered as an 
interval of more than ordinary illumination : as if some rays from 
the light of the approaching world had found their way to the 
darkness of the parting spirit, and revealed to it an existence 
that could not terminate in the grave, but was to commence 
in death. 

'• But these uses are condemned, as being not only superstitious 
but Popish uses. As to that, I must say that I feel no disposition 
to give any assistance even to the orthodox rapine of the living, 
in defeating even the heterodox charity of the dead. I am awaro 
that this objection means somewhat more than directly meets the 
ear, if it means anything. The objects of these bequests, it seems, 
are Catholics, or, as they have been called. Papists ; and the 
insinuation clearly is, that the religion of the objects of this 
woman's bounty, calls upon me to exercise some peculiar rigour of 
interference to abridge or defeat her intentions. Upon this point 
I wish to be distinctly understood ; I do not conceive this to be 
the spirit of our existing law ; nor, of course, the duty of this court to 
act upon that principle in the way contended for. In times, thank 



378 



LIFE OF CURRAN. 



God, now past, the laws would have warranted such doctrines. 
l^hose laws owed their existence to unfortunate combinations of cir- 
cumstances that were thought to render them necessary. Butifiue 
look back luith sorroio to their enactment^ let zis look forward with 
kindness and gratitude to their o^epeal. Produced by national 
calamity, they were brought by national benevolence^ as well as by 
national contrition^ to the altar ofjmblic justice and concord^ and 
there offered as a sacrifice to atone, to heal, to conciliate, to restore 
social confidence.^ and give us the hojpe of prosperity and safety, 
which no people ever had, or deserved, or dared to have, except 
where it is founded on the community of interests, a perfectly- 
even and equal participation of just rights, and a consequent con- 
tribution of all the strength — of all the parts so equally interested 
in the defence of the whole. 

" I know they have been supposed to originate in religious 
bigotry — that is, religious zeal carried to excess — I never thought 
so. The real spirit of our holy religion is too incorruptibly pure 
and beneficent to be depraved into any such excess. Analyse the 
bigot's object, and we see he takes nothing from religion but a 
flimsy pretext in the jH'ofanation of its name ; he professes the 
correction of error and the propagation of truth. But when he 
has gained the victory, v.hat are the terms he makes for himself? 
Power and profit. What terms does he make for religion ? Pro- 
fession and conformity. What is that profession ? The mere utter- 
ance of the lips ; the utterance of sounds, that after a pulsation or 
two upon the air, are just as visible and lasting as they are audible. 
What is the conformity ? Is it the practice of any social virtue 
or Christian duty ? Ts it the forgiveness of injuries, or the pay- 
ment of debts, or the practice of charity ? No such things. It is 
the performance of some bodily gesture or attitude. It is going 
to some place of worship. It is to stand or to kneel, or to bow to 
the poor-box, but it is not a conformity that has anything to do 
with the judgment, or the heart, or the conduct. All these things 
bigotry meddles not with, but leaves them to religion herself to 



THE PENAL LAWS. 379 

perform. Bigotry only adds one more, and that a very odious 
one, to the number of those human stains which it is the business 
of true rehgion not to burn out with the bigot's fire, but to 
expunge and wash away by the Christian's tears : such, Invariably, 
in all the countries and ai^es, have been the motives to the bigot's 
conflicts, and such the use of his victories : not the propagation 
of any opinion, but the engrossment of power and plunder ; of 
homage and tribute. Such, I much fear, was the real origin of 
the Popery laws. But power and privilege must necessarily be 
confined to very few. In hostile armies you find them pretty 
equal, the victors and the vanquished, in the numbers of their 
hospitals and in the numbers of their dead ; so it is with nations, 
the great mass is despoiled and degraded, but the spoil itself is 
confined to few indeed. The result finally can be nothing but the 
disease of dropsy and decrepitude. In Ireland this was peculiarly 
the case. Religion was dishonoured, man was degraded, and social 
affection was almost extinguished. Kfeiv^ a very few still profited 
by this abasement of humanity. But let it be remembered, with 
a just feeling of grateful respect to their patriotic and disinterested 
virtue, and it is for this purpose that I have alluded as I have 
done, that that few composed the whole power of the legislature 
which concurred in the repeal of that system, and left remaining 
of it, not an edifice to be demolished, but a mere heap of rubbish, 
unsightly, perhaps pernicious, to be carted away. 

" If the repeal of those laws had been a mere abjuration of 
intolerance, I should have given it little credit. The growing 
knowledge of the world, particularly of the sister nation, had 
disclosed and unmasked intolerance, had put it to shame, and 
consequently to flight ! But though public opinion may j^roscribe 
intolerance, it cannot taJce aivay poioers or privileges established by 
law. Those powers of exclusion and monopoly could be given up 
only by the generous relinquishment of those who possessed them. 
And nobly were they so relinquished by those repealing statutes. 
Those lovers of their country saw^ the public necessity of the 



380 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

sacrifice, and most disinterestedly did they make it. If too, they 
have been singular in this virtue, they have been as singularly 
fortunate in their reward. In general, the legislator, though 
he sows the seed of public good, is himself numbered with 
the dead before the harvest can be gathered. With us it has 
not been so — with us the public benefactors, many of them 
at least, have lived to see the blessing of Heaven upon their 
virtue, in an uniformly accelerating progress of industry and 
comfort, and liberality, and social affection, and common 
interest, such as I do not believe that any age or nation has ever 
witnessed. 

" Such I do know was the view, and such the hope, with which 
that legislature, noio no more ! proceeded so far as they went, in 
the repeal of those laws so repealed. And well do I know how 
warmly it is now remembered by every thinking Catholic, that 
not a single voice for those repeals was or could be given, except 
by a Protestant legislator. With infinite pleasure do I also know 
and feel, that the same sense of justice and good will which then 
produced the repeal of those hnvs, is coiitinuing to act, and with 
increasing energy, up)on those 2)€TSons in both countries, ivhose worth 
and whose ivisdom are likely to explode whatever principle is 
dictated by bigotry and folly, and to give currency and actio?i to 
whatever principle is wise and salutary. Such, also, I know to be 
the feelings of every court in this hall. It is from this enlarged 
and humanized spirit of legislation that courts of justice ought to 
take their 2^ri7iciples of expounding the law. 

" At another time I should probably have deemed it right to 
preserve a more respectful distance from some subjects which I 
have presumed (but certainly with the best intentions, and I hope, 
no unbecoming freedom), to approach. But I see the interest the 
question has excited, and I think it right to let no person carry 
away with him any mistake, as to the grounds of my decision, or 
suppose that it is either the duty or the disposition of our courts 
to make any harsh or jealous distinctions in their judgment 



cueran's later years. 381 

founded on any differences of religious sects or tenets. I think 
therefore, the motion ought to be refused; and I think myself 
bound to mark still more strongly my sense of its impropriety, by 
refusing it with full costs."] 

The remaining years of Mr. Curran's life contain little of inci- 
dent. His time was passed without much variety between the 
duties of his judicial situation, and the- enjoyment of that social 
intercourse for which his taste continued undiminished to the last. 
It was observed by his friends, to whom he was an object of so 
much interest that the slightest circumstance connected with him 
attracted their attention, that his spirits began to decline from 
the moment of his elevation to the bench. He felt sensible him- 
self that the sudden discontinuance of those modes of intellectual 
exercise, which an uninterrupted habit of so many years had 
rendered almost a necessary of life, was impairing the health of 
his mind.* All his powers w^ere still in the fullest vigor, and he 

* It was at this time tliat Charles Phillips made the acquaintance of Mr. Curran. He 
thus describes its commencement ; 

" When I was called to the bar he was on the bench ; and, not only bagless, but brief- 
less, I was one day, with many an associate, taking the idle round of the hall of the Four 
Courts, when a common friend told me he was commissioned by the Master of the Rolls 
to invite me to dinner that day at the Priory, a little country villa about four miles from 
Dublin. Those who recollect their first introduction to a really great man, may easily 
comprehend my delight and my consternation. Hour after hour was counted as it passed, 
and, like a timid bride, I feared the one which was to make me happy. It came at last, 
the important ^ve o'clock^ the ne phis ultra of the guest who would not go dinnerless at 
Curran's. Never shall I forget my sensations when I caught the first glimpse of the little 
man through the vista of his avenue. There he was, as a thousand times afterward I saw 
him, in a dress which you would imagine he had borrowed from his tip-staff— his hands 
on his sides— his face almost parallel with the horizon— his under lip protruded, and the 
impatient step and the eternal attitude only varied by the pause during which his eye 
glanced from his guest to his watch, and from his watch reproachfully to his dining- 
room. It was an invincible peculiarity ; one second after five o'clock, and he would not 
wait for the viceroy. The moment he perceived me, he took me by the hand, said he 
would not have any one introduce me, and with a manner which I often thought was charm' 
ed, at once banished every apprehension, and completely familiarized me at the Priory. 
I had often seen Curran — often heard of him — often i-ead him, but no man ever knew any 
thing about him who did not see him at his own table with the few whom he selected. Ho 
was a little convivial deity ! He soared in every region, and was at home in all ; he touch- 



382 LIFE OF CtlEEAN. 

could not but feel discontented and mortified at finding them (not 
so much released from toil as) condemned to repose. In the hope 
of removing this inquietude by indulging his faculties in their ac- 
customed tastes, he began to project one or two literary works. * 
One of them, and which it is much to be regretted that he had 
not the firmness to execute, Avas memoirs of his own time ; but all 
the entreaties of his friends, and all his own resolutions, gave w^ay 
before his unconquerable aversion to written compositions. The 
only notice of tliis intended Avork found among his papers, was the 
following motto and preface : 

ed every thing, and seemed as if he had created it ; he mastered the human heart with the 
same case that lie did liis violin. You wept, and you laughed, and you wondered ; and 
the wonderful creature who made you do all at will never let it appear that he was more 
than your equal, and was quite willing, if you chose, to become your auditor. It is said 
of Swifc that his rule was to allow a minute's pause after he had concluded, and then, 
if no person took up the conversation, he recommenced. Curran had no conversational 
rule whatever ; he spoke from impulse ; and he had the art so to draw you into a partici- 
pation, that, though you folt an inferiority, it was quite a contented one. Indeed, noth- 
ing could exceed the urbanity of his demeanour. At the time I speak of he was turned of 
sixty, yet he was as playful as a child. The extremes of youth and age were met in him ; 
he had the experience of the one and the simplicity of the other. At five o'clock we sat 
down to dinner, during which the host gave ample indications that it was one of his happy 
days. He had his moody ones : there was no one more uncertain. Joyous was my an- 
ticipation of a delightful evening. But, alas ! what are the hopes of man ? When the 
last dish had departed, Curran totally confounded me with a proposal, for which I was 
anything but prepared — ' Mr. Phillips, as this is the first of, I hope, your very many visits 
to tlie Priory, I may as well at once initiate you into the peculiarities of the place. You 
may observe, though the board is cleared, there are no preparations for a symposium : 
it all depends upon you. My friends here generally prefer a xoalk after dinner. It is a 
Bweet evening ; but if you wish for wine, say so without ceremony.' Even now I can see 
Curran's star-like eyes twinkling at the disappointment no doubt visible in mine. I had 
heard, and truly, that he was never more delightful than with half a dozen friends, after 
dinner, over his bottle. The hope in which I had so long revelled was realized at last — and 
here came this infernal walk and the ' sweet evening !' Oh, how I would have hailed a 
thunder-storm ! But, to say the truth, the sun was shining, and the birds were singing, 
and the flowers were blooming and breathing so sweetly on that autumn eve, that, wonder- 
ing not at the wish of my companions, I also voted for the ' walk.' Never was man so 
mystified. We took the walk, no doubt, but it was only to the drawing-room, where, over 
a dessert freshly culled from his gardens, and over wines for which his board was cele- 
brated, we passed those hours which formed an era in my life. It was the commence- 
ment of that happy intoixourse which gave this world a charm it ought, perhaps, never to 
possess." 
• He left a novel more than half finished, and a long criticism on Milton.— M. 



LITERAKT PROJECTS. 383 

" You that propose to be the historian of yourself, go first and 
trace out the boundary of your grave — stretch forth your hand 
and touch the stone that is to mark your head, and swear by the 
Majesty of Death, that your testimony shall be true, unwarped by 
prejudice, unbiassed by favour, and unstained by malice ; so 
mayest thou be a witness not unworthy to be examined before the 
awful tribunal of that after time, which cannot begin, until you 
shall have been numbered with the dead. 

"I have frequently conceived the design of wTiting some 
memoirs of myself, and of the times in which I have lived, but I 
have been prevented by other avocations, not very compatible with 
such a purpose. I was also deterred by the great hazard to which 
every man is exposed who ventures to take himself for a subject. 
What security can he offer to himself or to his reader against the 
glosses and perversions of false modesty and vain glory? How- 
can he satisfy either that he is not an advocate, when he should 
bejonly a reporter? As to the strange and wayward destinies that 
have agitated this unhappy country during the interval I speak of 
— when I recollect the strong incitement that I felt as an observer 
or an. actor, can I hope to subside into that unfevered moderation, 
without which I can scarcely be competent to the task of review- 
ing or recording them"? And yet, perhaps, in my strong feeling of 
the difficulty and the danger, there may be some hope of escape. 
The consciousness may be some safeguard against myself, and the 
fairness of the avowal will naturally prevent the reader from fol- 
lowing me when I am led astray. I have therefore resolved to 
make some attempts upon the subject, in such intervals of health 
or of leisure as I may be able to command ; pursuing it in that 
way, I cannot hope for much minuteness of detail, or much exact- 
ness of connexion. But, how^ever imperfect the performance may 
be, and indeed must be under such circumstances, yet if it shall 
contribute to preserve the memory .of some acts, and of some 
actors, that ought not to perish, but should be preserved for the 
purpose of praise, or punishment, or example, my labour, however 
humble, will not be without its use." 



3S4 LITE OF CUKRAX. 

He thus alludes to the same subject in one of his private letters : 
" I have long thought of doing something on the time in Avhich 
I have myself lived, and acted, tmd suffered ; from the bringing 
Ireland, in 1782, from the grave in which she had slept for so 
many centuries, to her reinterment in 1800; after so short an 
inteiTal of hectical convalescence, and of hope so cruell}^ and 
effectually assailed and extinguished, probably for ever! This 
must, of necessity, draw me to collateral notice of myself in some 
small and very subordinate degree — the few events that befel 
myself — and the sentiments and opinions that I entertained upon 
public affairs, together with the notions that I formed as a public 
and professional man. Perhaps the strong terror which I antici- 
pate at the possible seductions of silly vanity and egotism may be 
some antidote against their poison. And yet, perhaps, on this very 
point, my present feelings should convince me how little I have to 
hope from my own caution or discretion. I am conscious that I 
feel uneasy at thinking that the fooleries and falsehoods that have 
been published as memoirs of me during my life, will be more 
wantonly repeated when I am gone, which must be soon. And 
though I now think my only idea is to leave behind me some 
little postscript, merely to prevent misrepresentation, and modestly 
confining itself within the extreme insignificance of the subject, 
who, my dear Dick, will go bail for the quill that is bom of a 
goose ?" 

Another and a more favourite design, which the same distaste 
to writing involved in a similar fate, was the composition of a 
novel, of which the scenes and characters were to be connected 
with the modern history of Ireland. Of this work, which since 
the period of the Union he had been meditating, his mind had 
completed the whole plan : he often repeated long passages, 
descriptive of the most interesting situations, and marked by a 
style of affecting eloquence, which would have rendered the work, 
had he submitted to the task of committing it to paper, a valuable 
and very original accession to that department of English literature. 



CORKESPONDENCE. 385 

However, although subsequent to Mr. Curran's leaving the bar, 
his mind produced little that could add to his previous reputation, 
there still remain many farther examples of his style and opinions, 
preserved in his letters on private and public subjects, and in occa- 
sional speeches, from which a selection shall be introduced in the 
remaining portion of his history. The greater number of the 
private letters are written from England, which, notwithstanding 
his constant complaints against what he considered the cold unso- 
cial manners of its people, he seized every opportunity of visiting, 
and seldom quitted without reluctance and despondency. This 
was particularly the case since the Union, of wdiich the effects had 
been so fatal to the society of the Irish capital. 

TO LEONARD m'nALLY ESQ., DUBLIN. 

♦'Godwin's, 41 Skinner street, London.* 

" Dear Mac, 

" I got the cover yesterday, thinking to \vrite a Very long wise 
letter to you ; now I have only the few moments that G.'s griskin 
takes to be burnt. Poor Tooke is, I fear, at his last. A singular 
man ! One glory he has eminently — he has been highly valued 
by many good men of his day, and persecuted by almost every 
scoundrel that united the power with the wall to do so. His 
talents were of the first stamp, his intellect most clear, his attach- 
ment to England, I think, inflexible, his integrity not to be 
seduced, and his personal courage not to be shaken. If this shall 
be admitted, he has lived long enough ; and if it is not, he has 
lived too long. 

"My health is much better; ray breast quite free, the pain gone, 
my appetite rather better, sleep not so profound, spirits flatter, 
temper more even, altogether some gainer by the reduction of wine. 
At your side, I understand, my good friends have Sangradoed me, 
but I have taken only the water ; no bleeding for me. I have 
written to Amelia; that may save you some three pages, which 

* Godwin, the novelist, liept a book-shop in Sliinner street, at this time.— M. 

17 



386 LIFE OF CUEIiAN. 

mio-ht be blank and written at the same time. I would beo- a 
line, but I shall have set out too soon to get it. No news here, 
but what the papers give you ; they are all mad about the conven- 
tion; I ditfer from them totally, as I feel a disposition to do on 
every subject. 

"I am glad to hear you are letting yourself out at Old Orchard; 
you are certainly unwise in giving up such an inducement to 
exercise, and the absolute good of being so often in good air. I 
have been talking about your habit without naming yourself I 
am more persuaded that you and Egan are not sufficiently afraid 
of weak liquors. I can say, from trial, how little pain it costs to 
correct a bad habit. On the contrary, poor nature, like an ill-used 
mistress, is delighted with the return of our kindness, and is anxious 
to show her gratitude for that return, by letting us see how well 
she becomes it. 

"I am the more solicitous upon this point from having made 

this change, which I see will make me w^aited for in heaven longer 

than perhaps they looked for. If you do not make some pretence 

for lingering, you can have no chance of conveying me to the 

wherry ; and the trutli is, I do not like surviving old friends. I • 

am somewhat inclined to Avish for posthumous reputation; and if 

you go before me, I shall lose one of the most irreconcilable of my 

trumpeters; therefore, dear Mac, no more water, and keep the 

other element, your v.-ind, for the benefit of your friends. I wnll 

show my gratitude as well as I can, by saying handsome things 

of you to the saints and angels before you come. Best regards to 

flll with you. 

"Yours, &c. 

"J. P. C." 



TO MISS PHILPOT, DUBLIN. 

Loudon Castle (Scotlayid), Sept. 12, 1810. 

"The day is too bad for shooting, so I write. We arrived in 
miserable weather at Donaghadee; thence we set sail for the 



TOUK IN SCOTLAND. 387 

Port, where, after a prosperous voyage of ten hours, we arrived. 
Two English gentlemen had got before us to the inn, and engaged 
four horses, all there were; two might have drawn them one very 
short stage, and they saw us prepare to set out with a cart, which 
we did, and I trust with a cargo of more good manners and good 
humour aboard us than the two churls could boast in their chaise 
and four. 

"I was greatly delighted with this country; you see no trace 
here of the Devil working against the wisdom and beneficence of 
God, and torturing and degrading his creatui-es. It seems the 
romancing of travelling; but I am satisfied of the fact, that the 
poorest man here has his children taught to read and write, and 
that in every house is found a Bible, and in almost every house a 
clock; and the fruits of this are manifest in the intelligence and 
manners of all ranks. The natural effect of literary information, 
in all its stages, is to give benevolence and modesty. Let the intel- 
lectual taper burn ever so brightly, the horizon which it lights is 
sure but scanty; and if it soothes our vanity a little, as being the 
circle of our light, it must check it also, as being the boundary of 
the interminable region of darkness that lies beyond it. I never 
knew any person of any real taste and feeling, in whom knowledge 
and humility were not in exact proportion. In Scotland what a 
work have the four and twenty letters to show for themselves! — 
the natural enemies of \ace, and folly, and slavery; the great 
sowers, but still greater weeders, of the human soil. No where 
can you see the cringing hypocrisy of dissembled detestation, so 
inseparable from oppression, and as little do you meet the hard, 
and dull, and right lined angles of the southern visage; you find 
the notion exact and the phrase direct, with the natural tone of 
the Scottish muse. 

"The first night, at Ballintray, the landlord attended us at sup- 
per; he would do so, though we begged him not. We talked to 
him of the cultivation of potatoes. I said I wondered at his taking 
them in place of his native food, oatmeal, so much more substantial. 



388 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

His answer struck me as very cliaracteristic of the genius of 
Scotland — frugal, tender and picturesque. 'Sir,' said he, 'we are 
not- so much i' the wrong as you think; the tilth is easy, they are 
swift i' the cooking, they take little fuel; and then it is pleasant to 
see the gude -wife Avi' a' her bairns aboot the pot, and each wi' a 
potato in its hand.' 

" We got on to Ayr. It was fortunate ; it was the last day of 
the rain and the first of the races ; the town was unusually full, 
and we stood at the inn door — no room for us. ' My dear Cap- 
tain,''* said I, ' I suppose we must lie in the streets.' ' No, that 
you shall not,' says a good-looking man — it was Campbell of Fair- 
field — ' my wife and I knew you were coming, and we have a warm 
bed ready for you ; she is your countrywoman, and I am no stran- 
ger to you ; I had a trial in Dublin eight years ago, and you were 
in the cause.' ' Oh ! yes, sir, I remember ; we beat the enemy.' 
' Oh ! yes, sir,' says Campbell of Fairfield, ' I beat the enemy, 
though you were at his head.' I felt my appetite keen. I was . 
charmed with the comical forgiveness of his hospitality. I assured 
him I heartily forgave him for thrashing my rascal client ; and a 
few moments brought me to the kind greeting of my very worthy 
countrywoman. They w ent a little aside, and I overheard their 
whispers about dinner. Trouble, you may suppose, I did not wish 
to give ; but the feeling of the possible delay by an additional 
dish, was my panic. ' My dear Madam, I hope you won't make 
me feel that I am not one of your family by adding any thing.' 
' No, that I won't,' says she ; ' and if you doubt my word, I'll give 
you the security of seven gentlemen against any extravagance.' So 
saying, she pointed to a group of seven miniatures of young men, 



* The late Joseph Atkinson, Esq., of Dublin. — C. [He was one of Moore's earliest and best 
friends, and ample justice was done to his merits and his memory, by "the poets of all 
circles," in some beautiful stanzas on his death. It may be remembered that one of 
Moore's Juvenile Poems was a "Familiar Epistle," addressed to Mr. Atkinson, to whom, 
also, was written a missive from Bermuda, in Moore's Odes and Epistles from Ame- 
rica.— M.] 



ADMIRATION OF SCOTLAND. 389 

that hung- over the fire-place. 'Six of those poor fellows are all 
over the earth ; the seventh, and these two little girls, are with us ; 
you will think that good bail against the wickedness of extrava- 
gance. Poor fellows !' she repeated. ' Nay, madam, don't say 
" poor fellows," at the moment when you feel that hospitaUty pre- 
vents the stranger from being a poor fellow. You don't think this 
the only house in the world vrhere the wanderer gets a dinner, 
and a bed ; who knows, my dear countrywoman, but Providence 
is at this moment paying to some of your poor fellows far away 
from you, for what your kind heart thinks it is giving for 
nothing.' ' Oh, yes,' cried she ; ' God bless you for the thought.' 
'Amen, my dear madam,' answered I; 'and I feel that he has 
done it.' 

" We were much pleased with the races ; not, you may suppose, 
at a few fooHsh horses forced to run after each other, but to see 
so much order and cheerfulness ; not a single dirty person nor a 
ragged coat. I w\as introduced to many of their gentry. Lord 
Eglington, Lord Casselis,. Lord Archibald Hamilton, &c., and 
pressed very kindly to spend some time with them. 

" Poor Burns ! — his cabin could not be passed unvisited or un- 
wept ; to its two Httle thatched rooms — kitchen and sleeping- 
place — a slated sort of parlor is added, and 'tis now an alehouse. 
We found the keeper of it tipsy ; he pointed to the corner on 
one side of the fire, and wdth a most mal-a-ioro'pos laugh, ob- 
served, ' there is the very spot where Robert Burns was born. 
The genius and the fate of the man were already heavy on my 
heart; but the drunken laugh of the landlord gave me such a 
view of the rock on which he foundered, I could not stand it, but 
burst into tears. 

" On Thursday we dine with Lord Eglington, and thence I hope 
to pursue our little tour to Lochlomond, Glasgow, Edinburgh, &c. 
These places are, at this time of the year, much deserted : how- 
ever, we shan't feel it quite a solitude ; and, at all events, publi(3 
buildings, &c., do not go to watering-places, so that still something 



390 LIFE OF CUEKAN. 

will be visible. In tins region the winter is always mild, but the 
rain is almost perpetual, and still worse as you advance to the 
north. An Englishman said to an Highlander, ' Bless me. Sir, 
does it rain for ever V The other answered — ' Oh ! nay, Sir, it 
snaws whiles.' 

" See what a chronicle I have written, &c., &c. 

" J. P. C." 

The preceding is not the only record that Mr. Curran has left 
of his admiration of Scotland. His defence of Mr. Hamilton 
Rowan contains a short but glowing eulogium upon the genius of 
that country, for whose splendid services in the cause of the human 
mind no praise can be too great. After speaking ot the excessive 
terror of French principles, by which juries v/ere governed in their 
verdicts, he pi-oceeded : — " There is a sort of aspiring and adven- 
turous credulity, v^hich disdains assenting to obvious truths, and 
delights in catching at the improbability of circumstances, as its 
best ground of faitli. To what other cause can you ascribe that 
in the wise, the reflecting, and the philosophic nation of Great 
Britain, a printer has been found gravely guilty of a libel, for pub- 
lishing those resolutions to which the prime minister of that king- 
dom had actually subsci'ibed his name ? To what other cause can 
j^u ascribe what, in my mind, is still more astonishing; — in such 
a country as Scotland — a nation cast in the happy medium between 
the spiritless acquiescence of submissive poverty and the sturdy 
credulity of pampered wealth — cool and ardent- — adventurous and 
persevering — winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every 
science, with an eye that never winks and a wing that never tires — 
crowned as she is with the spoils of every art, and decked with the 
wreath of every muse, from the deep and scrutinizing researches 
of her Hume to the sweet and simple, but not less sublime and 
pathetic, morality of her Burns — how from the bosom of a country 
like that, genius, and character, and talents, should be banished to 
a distant barbarous soil, condemned to pine under the horrid com- 



LETTER FROM CIIELTENAM. 391 

munion of vulgar vice and base-born profligacy, for twice the 
period that ordinary calculation gives to the continuance of human 
life ?" '^' 

TO PETER LESLIE, ESQ., DUBLIN. 

"Cheltenham, Sept. 11, ISU. 

"Dear Peter, 

" Don't open this till the little circle of our Hirish friends are 
together. You will be all glad to hear tliat an old friend is yet in 
the harbour of this stormy world, and has not forgotten you : in 
truth, it is only that sentiment that troubles you with this worth- 
less despatch ; but small as its value may be, it is worth at least 
vvhat it costs you. I don't think these waters are doing me any 
good — I think they never did ; they bury my poor spirits in the 
earth. I consulted yesterday evening (indeed chiefly to put so 
many moments to a technical death) our countryman B., a very 
obstinate fellow : though I paid him for his affability, and his 
'indeed, I think so too, Mr. Shandy,' I could not work him into an 
admission that I had any malady whatsoever, nor even any to hope 
for by continuing the intrigue with Mrs. Forty :j' so I have a 
notion of striking my tent, and taking a position beliind the 
Trent, at Doninglon.J During my stay here I have follen into 
some pleasant female society; but such society can be enjoyed 
only by those who are something at a tea-table or a ball. Tea 
always makes me sleepless ; and as to dancing, I tried three or four 
steps that were quite the cream of the thing in France at one time, 
and which cost me something. I though it might be the gaiters 
that gave them a piperly air ; but even after putting on my black 
silk stockings, and perusing them again before the glass, which I 
put on the ground for the purpose of an exact review, I found the 
the edition was too stale for republication. 

"The cover of this contains a list of all the politicians now in 

* Mr. Ciirran alludes to the sentence of Mr. Muir, Palmer, &c., who had been trans- 
ported for sedition — C. 
tThe person who dispensed the waters at Cheltenham.— C. 
if. The seat of Lord Moira.— C. 



392 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

Cheltenliam, and therefore you must see that I am out of work as 
well for my head as my heels. Even the neAvspapers seem so 
parched by the heat of the season, which is extreme, as to have 
lost all vegetation. In short, I have made no progress in anything 
except in marketing, and I fancy I can cast a glance upon a 
shoulder of Welsh mutton Avith all the careless indecision of an 
unresolved purchaser, and yet with the eye of a master ; so I have 
contrived to have two or three at five o'clock, except when I dine 
abroad, which I don't much like to do. 

*' If you remember our last political speculations, you know all 
that is to be known ; and that all being just nothing, you cannot 
well forget it. The smoke is thickest at the corners farthest from 
the chimney, and therefore near the fire we see a little more dis- 
tinctly ;* but as things appear to me, I see not a single ticket in 
the wheel that may not be drawn a blank, poor Paddy's not ex- 
cepted. To go back to the fire — each party has the bellows hard 
at work, but I strongly suspect that each of them does more to 
blind their rivals, and themselves, too, by blowing the ashes about, 
than thev do in coaxino- or chcrishino- the bhaze for the comfort 
or benefit of their own shins. Therefore, my dear Peter, though 
we have not the gift of prophecy, we have at least the privilege 
of praying. There is no act of parliament that takes away the 
right of preferring a petition to heaven ; and therefore, while it 
yet is lawful, I pray that all may end well, and that we may have 
an happy escape from knaves and fools. In that hope there is 
nothing either popish or seditious. To-morrow I go to Gloucester, 
to the music-meeting, and then I think Mrs. Forty and I shall take 
the embrace of an eternal adieu. Do not forget me to all our 
dear friends about you, and assure them that, however kindly 
they may remember me, I am not, as far as grateful recollection 

* This familiar image, almost similarly applied, was the subject of some perplexity to 
Br. Johnson. — " Roscommon, foreseeing that some violent concussion of the State was 
at hand, proposed to retire to Rome, alleging, that it was best to sit near the chimney 
when the chamber smoked, a sentence of which the application seems not very clear." — 
Life of Roscommon.— Q. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 393 

can go, in their debt. God grant we may all meet again in com* 
fort here, or in glory somewhere else. 

" Yours, dear Peter, very truly yours, 

" John P. Curran." 



TO RICHARD HETHERINGTON, ESQ.,"^ DUBLIN. 

«' London, 1811. 

" Dear Dick, 

" I merely write to say that I am alive. Never any thing 
so dull as this place ; I shall soon steer towards you. You must 
know I have been requested by a great sculptor to sit for him, and 
w^e are now employed in making a most beautiful head in mud, 
which is to be the model for a piece of immortal Parian marble. 
Is that a small style of going, Dick ? Having now disposed of what 
was most important, we come to smaller matters — ]:)olitics and war. 
Wellington has been obliged to give up Rodrigo, and retire west- 
ward ; I suppose to eat his Christmas pies at his old quarters in 
Torres Vedras, to which every hundred pound that is sent to him 
costs only one hundred and forty pounds here. As to politics, they 
seem quite relinquished by every one : nobody expects any mate- 
rial change of men or measures ; nor, in truth, do I see any thing 
in the present state of things that can't be done as well by one set 
as another. I have little doubt that Perceval is as warlike a hero 
as Grenville, and just as capable of simplifying our government to 
the hangman and the taxgatherer. I am just interrupted ; so, God 

bless you. 

" J. P. Curran." 



TO THE SAME. 

" Holland House, 1811 . 

"Dear Dick, 

" The allurement of a frank gives you this. Here I am, 
much better I think — all lonely. Burton here for a week — al- 

* This gentleman held the situation of deputy keeper of the Rolls under Mr. Curran ; 
all of whose letters in his possession he kindly communicated for insertion in this 
work.— C. 



394: LIFE OF CURKAN. 

most every body else away. I am scarcely sorry for having* come, 
one gets out of print ; liowever, I have scarcely to complain, I 
find myself quite a proof copy. Dear Dick, a man loves to be 
cockered a little ; and certainly I am not stinted here. I suspect it 
is all aftectation when I talk cheaply of the great and the grand ; 

for instance, I went to pay my devoirs to Lady D , who was 

very kind ; also to Lady A , who was vastly gracious ; also 

Godwin, as also Lord Holland. To-morrow I shall think of Denis 
O'Bryen and the Duke of Sussex ; 'twill be well if I don't forget 
you and the hill, while I remember 

" J. P. C." 

" Some more lies from the continent : — another victory — three 
legs of Bonaparte shot away, the fourth foot very precarious. I 
really suspect that you have been here incog. ^ and bit every body ; 
for they will believe nothing, even though authenticated by the 
most respectable letters from Gottingen. Farewell. 

" J. P. CURRAN." 



TO THE SAME. 

" London, October 12, 1811. 

"Dear Dick, 

" I look forward to being very domestic for the winter. I 
feel my habits and feelings much upon the change : it puts me in 
mind of a couple of bad verses of my own growth, 

And the long train of joys that charm'd before. 
Stripped of their borrow'd plumage, charm no more. 

I am weak enough to indulge in a conceited contrition for having 
done nothing, and the penitential purpose of doing something before 
I die. God help us ! how poor the vanity that self accuses us of 
wasting funds that never existed, and draws for compensation upon 
the time that we are not destined to see ! or upon efforts that we 



ENGLISH POLITICS. 395 

liave not strength to make ! You will think it odd that here in 
London I should he very studious ; but so it has been. I have 
been always prone to metaphysical and theological subjects, though 
T well know the uncertainty and fruitlessness of such researches.; 
however, I think to call another cause, and adjourn that, till I go 
thither where all must be plain and clear — where the evidence 
must be solid, and the judgment infallible. 

" I have been only at one play, and that in company with the 
author, Moore.^'^ I sleep three or four nights in the week in the 
country ; so that in Ireland I look to be very good — like an old 
bachelor who proposes to marry, and take the benefit of an insol- 
vent act. 

" There is still no news here — people seem almost sick of con- 
jecturing. As to my part, if I have any opinion, it is that a 
change would be only partial. The public undoubtedly have no 
enthusiasm for the outs, and Perceval unquestionably has risen 
much. In the City tliejr think him a man of probity and of busi- 
ness, which they think much better than high and lofty tumbling. 
As to our miserable questions, they are not half so interesting as 
the broils in the Caraccas. What a test of the Union ! And 
what a proof of the apathy of this blind and insolent country I 
They affect to think it glorious to struggle to the last shilling of 
their money, and the last drop of our blood, rather than submit 
their property and persons to the capricious will of France ; and 
yet that is precisely the power they are exercising over us— the 
modest authority of sending over to us laws, like boots and shoes 
ready made for exportation, v/ithout once condescending to take 
our measure, or ask whether or where they pinch us. 

" But enough, I think, of religion and politics. 

"J. P. C." 



* Thomas Moore. The play was operatic, and was damned. Itg name was " M. P. or 
the Blue Stockings."— M. 



396 LIFE OF CUERAN. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Mr. Curran is invited to stand for the borough of Newry— Speech to the electors— Letter 
to Sii- J. Swinburne— Letter on Irish affairs to H. R. H. the Duke of Sussex. 

From the period of Mr. Curran's elevation to the bench, his friends 
had been very desirous to see him a member of the British par- 
liament. Independent of the service which they expected that 
his zeal and talents might render to Ireland, there mingled with 
their feelings on this subject a sentiment of national pride. His 
parliamentary abilities they considered as having been greatly under- 
rated; notwithstanding the extensive circulation of his reported 
speeches, the admiration they had met in England was cold in 
comparison to the enthusiastic applause which their delivery had 
excited at home. They were therefore anxious that he should 
have an opportunity, before age or death should render it impos- 
sible, of justifying their preference, and confirming his own repu- 
tation by even a single display, before such an audience as the 
British senate, of those powers which his countrymen had so long 
been extolling as unrivalled. 

These reasons — particularly the sense of duty, were frequently 
urged upon him, but with little effect. The only question, upon 
which it seemed to him that he could be useful, was that of Catho- 
lic Emancipation; and even here he could not venture to be 
sanguine, When he recollected that his illustrious friend, Mr. 
Grattan, who had made that question almost the business of a 
long life, was still (though supported by so much of the most 
exalted rank and talent in the British empire) vainly exerting his 
splendid abilities to drive or shame the bigot from his post, Mr. 
Curran fear<^d that the accession of any strength that he possessed 



NEWRY ELECTION. 397 

would prove of little value to the cause. The motives of personal 
vanity or ambition had still less iniiuence. It is not surprising 
that he, who in the season of ardour and hope had been so negli- 
gent of fame, should continue equally inditierent, now that these 
incentives to action were passing or had passed away. 

Such Avere his feelings (too full perhaps of desj^ondency and 
indolence) when, upon the general election in 1812, the indepen- 
dent interest of the town of Newry proposed to elect him their 
member. A deputation from that borough having waited upon 
him for the purpose, he accepted the invitation,* and repaired to 
Newry;f but after a contest of six days, perceiving that the 

* The feelings with which Mr. Curran accepted the invitation appear in his answer. 
"to the worthy and independent electors of the borough of newry. 

" Gentlemen — I have just received an address, signed by a number of highly respect- 
able members of your ancient borough, inviting me to offer myself a candidate to repre- 
sent your town in parliament. To be thought worthy of such a trust, at so awful a crisis 
as the present, and to receive such an invitation, unsolicited and unexpected, is an 
honour that I feel deeply and gratefully. 

" Gentlemen, I need not trouble you with many words. You know my principles, you 
know my conduct heretofore — I ara not a stranger coming forward to menace, or to buy 
you, in order that I may sell you ; nor do I rest my pretension on any contrition for the 
past, nor any premediated promise that I will at some future period begin to act honestly 
by you. From the earliest period of my life to see this ill-fated country retrieved from 
her sad condition of suffering and of sharae has been the first and warmest wish of my 
heart, and warm it shall continue, till I myself am cold for ever. 

" I know you will not impute it to a want of the most profound respect for you, wlien 
I say that I will not personally solicit the vote of any individual. I cannot run the risk 
of soliciting a suitor in tl)e character of an elector — it would not benefit my judicial 
situation, and I think it would diminish that credit, which suffrage above all suspicion 
of bias, ought to give to your representative. It will therefore be sufficient that I attend 
you in such time before the election as will enable me to know your farther pleasure. 

"I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, with a full sense of your confidence and favour, 

" Your obedient servant, 

"John Philpot Curran. 
''Stephen's Green, Octoler 8, 1812." 

t Mr. Curran's reception was most enthusiastic. He was met two miles outside Newry, 
and about 3000 persons joined in drawing him into the borough in his carriage, from which 
the horses had been taken. He made a brilliant speech (of which no report has been 
preserved), which occupied eighty minutes in the delivery, and was greatly applauded. 
His rival, who avowed Anti-Catholic opinions, was groaned. But some of the Catholic 



398 LWE OF CUKRAN. 

strength of tlie other candidate (General Needham) left him no 
prospect of success, he declined any farther struggle. Upon this 
occasion, Mr. Curran delivered a speech of considerable length. 
It was liis last great public effort, and was characterized by the 
same energy and fancy, and the same spirit of patriotic enthusiasm, 
which reign in all his former productions. After stating to the 
electors of Xewry the circumstances under which he had been 
induced to appear among them, and the condition of the borough, 
which had baffled the exertions of his friends, Mr. Curran pro- 
ceeded to impress upon his hearers that the long train of sufferings 
which Ireland had endured for centuries had originated in the 
dissension of her people, and that whatever of them remained 
could only be removed by mutual toleration. " Under this sad 
coalition of confederating dissensions, nursed and fomented by the 
policy of England, this devoted country has continued to languish 
with small fluctuations of national destiny, from the invasion of 
the second Henry to the present time. And here let me be just 
while I am indignant ; let me candidly own that to the noble 
examples of British virtue, to the splendid exertions of British 
courage, to their splendid sacrifices, am I probably indebted for 
my feelings as an Irishmen and my devotion to my country. They 
thought it madness to trust themselves to the influence of any 
foreign country ; they thought the circulation of the political blood 
could be carried on only by the action of the heart within the 
body, and could not be injected from without. Events have shown 
you that what they thought, was just ; and that what they did, was 
indispensable : they thought they ought to govern themselves — 
they thought that at every hazard they ought to make the effort — 
they thought it more eligible to perish than to fail ; and to the 
God of Heaven I pray that the authority of so splendid an example 
may not be lost upon Ireland." 

After describing the condition of Ireland subsequent to the 

voters were not true to their own cause, and this, backed by government influence, 
defeated Curran. — M. 



SPEECH AT NEWKY. 399 

revolution, Mr. Ciirran continued; — ''At length, in 1782, a noble 
effort was made, and deathless ought to be the name of him* that 
made it, and deathless ought to be the gratitude of the country 
for which it was made — the independence of Ireland was acknow- 
ledged. Under this system of asserted independence, our progress 
in prosperity was much more rapid than could have been expected, 
when we remember the conduct of a very leading noble person 
upon that occasion — never was a more generous mind or a purer 
heart — but his mind had more purity than strength. He had all 
that belonged to taste, and courtesy, and refinement ; but the grand 
and the sublime of national reform were composed of colours too 
strong for his eye, and comprised an horizon too outstretched for 
his vision.f The Catholics of Ireland were in fact excluded from 
the asserted independence of their country. Thus far the result 
comes to this, that w^herever perfect union is not found, complete 
redress must be sought in vain." 

Passing on to the Union, Mr. Curran proceeded — " The w^hole 
liistory of mankind records no instance of any hostile Cabinet, 
perhaps even of any internal cabinet, actuated by the principles 
of honour or of shame. The Iiish Catholic was therefore taught 
to believe, that if he surrendered his country he would cease to 
be a slave. The Irish Protestant was cajoled into the belief, that 
if he concurred in the surrender, he would be placed upon the 
neck of an hostile faction. Wretched dupe ! — You might as well 
persuade the gaoler that he is less a prisoner than the captives he 
locks tqj, merely because he carries the key in his poclcet.\ By that 

* Mr. G rattan. 

t The person here alluded to was obviously the late Earl of Charlemont ; but though 
tliat nobleman originally opposed the claims of the Roman Catholics, he had the honour 
in his latter years of rising above his early prejudides; he has also made Ireland amends 
for the delay, in having left a representative of his house, and of his more matured 
opinions, from whom all that his country can demand is that lie may never change his 
present principles and conduct. — C. 

% We doubt not that this is the origin of Byron's well known lines in Don Juan : 
" The nations are 
In prison— but the gaoler, what is he ? 



400 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

reciprocal animosity, however, Ireland was surrendered ; the gnilt 
of the surrender was most atrocious — the consequences of the 
crime most tremendous and exemplary. We put ourselves into a 
condition of the most unqualified servitude — we sold our country, 
and we levied upon ourselves the price of the purchase — we gave 
up the right of disposing of our properties — we yielded to a 
foreign legislature to decide whether the funds necessary to their 
projects or their profligacy should be extracted from us, or be 
furnished by themselves; the consequence has been, that our 
scanty means have been squandered in her internal corruption as 
profusely as our best blood has been wasted in the madness of 
her aggressions, or the feeble folly of her resistance. Our debt 
has accordingly been increased more than tenfold — the common 
comforts of life have been vanishino- — we are sinkino- into beo-- 
gary — our poor people have been worried by cruel and unprincipled 
prosecutions, and the instruments of our government have been 
almost simplified into the tax-gatherer and the hangman. At 
length, after this long night of suffering, the morning star of our 
redemption cast its light upon us, the mist was dissolved and all 
men perceived that those whom they had been blindly attacking 
in the dark were in reality their fellow sufferers and their friends. 
AVe have made a discovery of the grand principle in politics, that 
the tyrant is in every instance the creature of the slave — that he 
is a cowardly and a computing animal — and that in every instance 
he calculates between the expenditure to be made and the advan- 
tage to be acquired. And I therefore do not hesitate to say that 
if the wretched Island of Man, that refugium peccatorum^ had 
sense and spirit to see the force of this truth, she could not be 

No lesser victim to the bolt and bar. 

Is the poor privilege to turn the key 

Upon the captive, freedom ? He's as far 

From the enjoyment of the earth and air, 

Who watches o'er the chain, as they who wear." 

But Byron avowed that a poet had a right, whenever he found a good idea, to seize 
and use it.— M. 



NEWRT ELECTION. 401 

enslaved by tlie whole power of England. The oppressor would 
see that the necessary expenditure in whips, and chains, and gib- 
bets, would infinitely countervail the ultimate value of the acquisi- 
tion ; and it is owing to the ignorance of this unquestionable 
truth, that so much of this agitated globe lias, in all ages, been 
crawled over by a Manx population. This discovery Ireland at 
last has made. The Catholic claimed his rights — the Protestant 
generously and nobly felt as he ought, and seconded the claim ; a 
silly government was driven to the despicable courage of cowardice, 
and resorted to the odious artillery of prosecutions — the expedi- 
ent failed : the question made -its way to the discussion of the 
senate— I will not tire you with the detail. A House of Com- 
mons who, at least, represented themselves, perhaps afraid, perhaps 
ashamed of their employers, became unmanageable tools in the 
hands of such awkward artists, and were dissolved; just as a 
beaten gamester throws the cards into the fire in hopes in a new 
pack to find a better fortune." 

A little farther on, Mr. Curran, again adverting to the circum- 
stances of the election, was interrupted by the other candidate's 
agent : when that person was made to sit down, Mr. Curran re- 
sumed. " I do not wonder at having provoked interruption when 
I spoke of your borough. I told you that from this moment it is 
free. Never in ray life have I so felt the spirit of the people as 
among you; never have I so felt the throbs of returning life. I 
almost forgot my own habitual estimate of my own small import- 
ance ; I almost thought it was owing to some energy within my- 
self, when I was lifted and borne on the buoyant surge of popular 
sympathy and enthusiasm. I therefore again repeat it, it is 
the moment of your new birth unto righteousness. Your proved 
friends are high among you — your developed enemies are expunged 
for ever — your liberty has been taken from the grave, and if she 
is put back into the tomb, it can be only by your own parricide, 
and she must be buried alive." 

"Ireland (said he, towards the conclusion of his address) can do 



402 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

more for herself now tlian slie has done for centuries heretofore. 
She lay a helpless hulk upon the water ; but now, for the first 
time, we are indebted to the Protestant spirit for the delicious 
spectacle of seeing her equipped with masts, and sails, and com- 
j)ass, and helm ; at length she is sea-worthy. Whether she is to 
escape the tempest and gain the port is an event to be disposed 
of by the great Ruler of the waters and the winds. If our voyage 
be prosperous, our success will be doubled by our unanimity ; but 
even if we are doomed to sink, we shall sink with honour. But 
am I over-sanguine in counting our Protestant allies ? Your own 
county gives you a cheering instance in a noble Marquis, ^"^ i-etiring 
from the dissipation of an English court, making his country his 
residence, and giving his first entrance into manhood to the cause 
of Ireland. It is not from any association of place that my mind 
is turned to the name of Moira — to name him is to recognize 
what your idolatry has given to him for so many years ; but a 
late transaction calls for a word or two. I thought anxiously 
upon it at the time, and from that time to this, if he required to 
be raised, he must have been raised in public opinion by the 
event of that negociation.f He saw that the public in either 



* The Marquis of Downshire. — C. 

t Mr. Curran had, a few weeks before, in an equally public manner, discountenanced 
the angry feelings with which he found some of his countrymen had regarded the con- 
duct of his noble friend in the recent negotiations for a new administration. At a pub- 
lic dinner, given in Dublin to the Bishop of Norwich by the friends of religious freedom, 
and attended by many, the most distinguished for rank and talent in Ireland, Mr. Curran, 
in addressing the meeting, enumerated the several illustrious persons in the empire who 
supported the cause which they were that day celebrating: "But," said he, " I have not 
yet mentioned the name, which I was delighted to see you were on the tiptoe of expecting, 
and which, in whatever order it might be mentioned, you had in your own minds placed 
in its natural station, at the head of the list — the beloved child of Ireland, the ornament, 
and consoler, and intrepid defender of his country- -the scholar of the camp — the philo- 
sopher of the senate -the exalted devotee of that high and unparlying honour, that will 
bend to no consideration of life, or death, or country, or even of fame : that man who, of 
all others, most distinctly sees into your character — your ardent, generous (do not be 
angry with me), your tender and excitable sensibility — your feather-springed disposa- 
bility to affectionate and momentary jealousy, which evaporates in the breath that 
expresses it. He knows it well— he loves you for it— he knows the rapid condition of its 



NEWRY ELECTION. 403 

country could not have any hope from an arrangement, in which 
the first prehminary was a selfish scramble for patronage, that 
must have ended in a scramble for power; in which the first 
efforts of patriotism were for the surrender of mopsticks in the 
palace ; to sink the head, and to irritate the man who wore the 
Crown, instead of making their first measure a restitution of 
representation to the people, who, if they were as strong as they 
ought to be, could have nothing to apprehend from the tinsel of a 
robe or the gilding of a sceptre. 

" Little remains for me to add to what I liave already said. I 
said you should consider how you ought to act — I will give you ray 
humble idea upon that point. Do not exhaust the resources of 
your spirit by idle anger or idle disgust — forgive those who have 
voted against you here — they will not forgive theniselves. I under- 
stand they are to be packed up in tumbrils \yith layers of salt be- 
tween them, and carted to the election for the country, to appear 
again in patriotic support of the noble projector of the glories of 
Walcheren. Do not envy him the precious cargo of the raw 
materials of virtuous legislation — be assured all this is of use. 

" Let me remind you before I go of that precept, equally pro- 
found and beneficent, which the meek and modest author of our 
blessed religion left to the world : ' and one command I give you, 
that you love one another.' Be assured that of tl»s love the true 
spirit can be no other than probity and honour. The great ana- 
logies of the moral and the physical world are surprisingly coinci- 
dent; you cannot glue two pieces of board together unless the 
joint be clean ; you cannot unite two men together, unless the 



recoil ; but he ought not to be wounded, nor you humiliated by any formal ceremonial of 
that contrition. iLoud applame.] But I find I am not so bad a painter as I thought; 
you have made it unnecessary for me to put the name over the picture. May I be per- 
mitted to add, that although I have not been altogether unhonoured by some condescend- 
ing notice from that illustrious and noble person, yet I am too proud to be swayed by any 
feeling which, if merely personal, must be despicable, and that it could not add a single 
pulsation to that energy of aflfection and respect with which my heart clings to him as an 
Irishman."— C. [The Earl Moira afterwards was created Marquis of Hastings.— M.] 



404: LIFE Ol^" CUKRAN. 

cement be virtue : for vice can give no sanction to compact, she 
can form no bond of affection. 

" And now, my friends, I bid you adieu, with a feeling at my 
heart that can never leave it, and which my tongue cannot attempt 
the abortive effort of expressing. If my death do not prevent it, 
we shall meet again in this place. If you feel as kindly to me as 
I do to you, relinquish the attestation which I know you had 
reserved for my departure. Our enemy has, I think, received the 
mortal blow ; but though he reels, he has not fallen ; and we have 
seen too much upon a greater scale of wretchedness of anticipated 
triumph. Let me therefore retire from among you in a way that 
becomes me and becomes you, uncheered by a single voice, and 
unaccompanied by a single man. May the blessing of God pre- 
serve you in the affection of one another.'"^' 

The following letters contain Mr. Curran's farther views upon 
the state of public affairs in Ireland at this period : 

to sir j. swinburne. 

"Sir, 

" I have just received the honour of your letter. I am very 
deeply, indeed, impressed by the honour of being thought by the. 
committee not unworthy of the office of steward, at the meeting 
of the friends of religious freedom. 

" If there were no obstacle in my way, but what was within my 
own control, most promptly, and with pride and gratitude, would 
I obey so flattering a summons ; but the difficulty is what it does 
not belong to me to dispense with. The Court of Chancery will 
be sitting on the day of your meeting, and I could not be warrant- 
ed in leaving my duty here, from any impulse, however strong, of 

* In the middle of liis speech Mr. Bell (a regularly ill-favoured gentleman), who was 
agent for the rival candidate, stood up, and fixed his eyes upon Mr. Curran, "with a very 
peculiar expression of countenance." On this Mr. Curran exclaimed, "Mr. Seneschal, I 
demand of you as returning officer, that I, a candidate, shall be protected, s,s you are in 
duty bound to do, frojn being disturbed by the obscene and unnatural grimaces of a 
baboon." Whereupon Mr. Bell sank into his seat — used up ! — M. 



iiiisii roLiTics. 405 

personal gratitude or respect. I cannot look forward to any pro- 
bable state of the court, that can leave me to my own disposal ; 
but if such should occur, I shall certainly wait upon you. I am, 
however, not a little consoled in the reflection, that my absence 
from such a scene can be regretted' only by myself, and that my 
presence could contribute little, or rather nothing, to the intended 
result. The sanction of illustrious personages,*' who vouchsafe to 
patronise the meeting, must do much towards its object ; and much 
also must be effected by the high rank and character of others, 
who I make no doubt will be zealous in following such an example, 
when the projects of intolerance are disclaimed by the authority 
of the enlightened and exalted ; and when the great mass of the 
people are permitted to see what cannot be difficult in so reflecting 
a nation as England, that the cause of tolerance is really that of 
justice, and prudence, and true Christianity, in which they them- 
selves are as deeply interested as their fellow-subjects can be. It 
is not, I trust, too sanguine to hope that practical bigotry must be 
driven to take refuge in flight ; and that the empire may look for- 
ward to the adoption of such just and beneficent counsels as must 
ever compose the only certain basis of internal tranquillity, and of 
external safety. I know, sir, you will perceive that I allude princi- 
pally to this part of the empire. I have passed not a short life in 
it ; my notions respecting it are the fruit of long observation of it 
both in and out of parliament ; and so deeply are these ideas graven 
upon my judgment, that upon a late occasion I was willing to forego 
every consideration of much labor passed, of advancing years, and 
declining health, and to undertake the duty of once more sitting in 
parliament. I could have no motive of ambition, or of party, or 
view to reputation ; I looked not to be an advocate for my country, 
but I did venture to hope that a man so peifectly removed from all 
temptation to partiality, and with so much opportunity of 
knowledge, might be received as not an incredible witness, in point 
of fact, for tliis afflicted island. And from the discharge of so 

* Dnkeg of Kent and Sussex, sons of George III.—M, 



406 J.IFE OF CUKKAN. 

sacred a duty, I thought it would have been most unworthy to 
affect to excuse myself upon any etiquette of office, when the law 
had declared no incompatibility between official and public duty. 
I did think, and I 3'et think, that if the real state of this country 
be fairly and fully impressed upon the parliament and the public, 
it must appear to demonsti-ation, that the hopes and the fears of 
the tw^o parts of the empire are one and the same ; that it is the 
critical moment in which every thino- ought to be done to oppose the 
embankment of a consolidated nation to the hostile torrent, instead 
of lea\dng it even a chance of admission through the interstices of 
an incohering and porous population ; and that those high persons, 
who sav/ things a year ago in this point of view, and were then 
willing to devote themselves to the public service, may, upon 
further consideration, think that the obstacles which then prevent- 
ed their intention ought not for ever to deprive their country of 
the benefits of their virtue or capacity to serve it. Such an event 
as I allude to, they may be assured, would have a most consoling 
and cheering effect upon Ireland, because we should look with con- 
fidence to their acting upon that noble and conciliating principle 
of religious freedom, which has raised your illustrious patron, and 
those who think as he does, so high in the reverence of all men ; 
they would be sure of retrieving Ireland from a state of suffering 
and peril ; they would be sure of finding a co-opei-ation in every 
honest Irishman infinitely superior to the zeal of party, or of sect, 
and founded on the pure devotion of public duty and public 
spirit. And it would convey to the heart of a loyal and ardent 
people a conviction that they were yet of a value in a quarter 
where their fondest hopes and affections had been fixed for years. 
But I fear my solicitude on this subject has led me to intrude 
farther than I had intended upon your attention. Permit me, 
therefore, only to request that you will be pleased to accept my 
cordial thanks for the courtesy of your communication, and to pre- 
sent my humble respects to the committee. 

" I have the honour to be, sir, <fec., 

"J. P. CURRAN." 



EELIGIOUS FREEDOM. 4:07 

TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 

" I cannot, sir, express the pleasure with which 1 learn that the 
sanction of your illustrious rank and your great name are given 
to that noble principle of religious freedom, and that upon a ground 
perfectly distinct from all view whatsoever of political party. The 
relation in which you stand with respect to your country, and your 
august house, must remove all pretext for soiling our pure and 
modest religion, by blending it with the sordid spirit of party ; or 
of advancing the projects of the latter, by an affected association 
with the former, in which heaven cannot be either interested or 
honoured, and in which the true principle of political wisdom and 
social virtue cannot foil to be degraded and depraved. Never, 
jDerhaps, have the fatal consequences of this monstrous union been 
more sadly proved and developed than in the Late few years that 
we have passed ; and more especially in this ill-fated country. In 
England your dissenters were pressed sorely enough by disabling 
and excluding statutes ; but still the sharpness of those legal mono- 
polies went rather against their interest than their honour. Still 
they were equal as Englishmen ; and though shut out, perhaps very 
unwisely and very unjustly, from a part, and certainly no incon- 
siderable part, of the constitutional precincts of their country, they 
still had the uncontrollable range of the residue as freely and 
proudly as any other portion of the land ; they had to complain 
of suffering rather than stigma or shame. With respect to other 
religious descriptions of sects, very unworthy indeed to be classed 
with dissenters — the strange combinations of persons connected 
together by the fantastical adoption of wild and extravagant opin- 
ions, much easier to be named than to be understood, England 
seems to have acted with the policy that might be expected from a 
discreet and thinking nation. You have most judiciously cut off 
the supplies, that martyrdom would have given them in their meek 
and ardent campaign against the sobriety and decorum of true 
religion. Your established clergy have stinted them in that food 



408 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

whicli refutation gives to folly. They have had too much good 
sense, and too much sound consideration for their sacred functions, 
to enter the lists of argument \Yith these learned cobblers, and right 
reverend blacksmiths. However they may have been mortified by 
the scandal of their orgies, they have had forbearance enough to 
leave their diseases to cure themselves, and to consign them to the 
wholesome and cooling regime of silent commiseration and inflexi- 
ble neglect. The Law has followed the example of the Church, and 
refused the honours of the pillory or the stake to the adventm'ous 
aspirants ; and to this concurrence in good temper and good sense 
may it be attributed, in a great degree at least, that these contra- 
band dealers and inventors of unheard-of forms of doctrine, and 
patterns of tenets, have not been still more successful in supersed- 
ing the good order and sobriety of the national faith and practice. 
I should have hoped that this concurrence was founded on the adop- 
tion of a maxim, that forms the basis of that principle so fortunately 
adopted by your Royal Highness, the inviolability of religious 
freedom. But deeply con(;erned am I to see, that however acted 
upon in England, it has not been pursued in Ireland with the same 
dignity and temper. In saying this I do not mean to impute abso- 
lutely bad intentions to any party, or to say that neither has been 
betrayed into any step that may call for censure or regret ; but I do 
think that in our late, or rather our present, unhappy conflicts here, 
a manifest distinction might be made. The Catholic was petition- 
ing for a repeal of certainly very afflicting grievances, and it would 
be only fair to make some allowance for the tone and phrase in 
which he might utter what came simply to this : — ' I am in bondage 
without havino- committed any crime. Mv deo-radation and suffer- 
ing are justified by the most cruel imputation on my character and 
honour, and I humbly pray to be set at liberty.' If a man were 
to utter such an appeal with insolence or outrage, I do not say he 
ought to be kindly heard ; but if he felt the right to freedom so 
coldly as to prefer his claim with an apathy that must freeze it, I 
should not hesitate to say, he ought not to be relieved ; he has not 



LETTER TO THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 409 

3'et arrived at tliat impatience of slavery, without which he cannot 
be yet ripe for freedom. I cannot, therefore, avoid saying that the 
mere ardour of the Cathohcs, in the pursuit of an object far more 
valuable than life, without wdiich life could be of no value, was not 
a just ground for suspecting that their meeting to petition was a 
mere pretext to cover any other or any criminal design. The rank 
and property of the persons, which made them so firmly responsi- 
ble to the State, should, I think, have repelled such a suspicion, 
and particularly when sanctioned by so numerous a co-operation of 
their Protestant fellovf -subjects. I do not say that the government 
might not have intended well, or that a most unhappy mistake w\as 
any other than an error of judgment; but I do think that when the 
subsequent conduct of the people had proved their innocence 
beyond all doubt, a milder and more conciliating conduct might 
have been adopted with equal dignity and wisdom. " But I fear a 
province is a bad school for a statesman to learn that the essence 
of dignity consists much more in rest than in action. It has not 
been so, and the consequence has been a state of trouble and fer- 
mentation, such as I never before witnessed in Ireland. Crimina- 
tion and recrimination have gone on to an extent on all sides, most 
deeply to be deplored by every man wdio wishes well to Ireland or 
the empire. The discussions of those unhappy questions have been 
carried on in the shape of criminal prosecutions; of proceedings 
that never should be resorted to, except in cases of real guilt, and 
never as political measures of aspersion or counteraction. The 
result has been — No culpable intention whatsoever has been 
proved ; no project has been defeated ; the purity of the admin- 
istration of justice itself has been exposed by the unhappy indis- 
cretion of giving ground for actions, and the readiness of bringing 
forward prosecutions, in which every judgment and verdict for them 
has been a public calamity, by sinking them in the public opinion, 
and leading the people to entertain an idea, which I trust can never 
be true, that even the judicial authority may be degraded to an 
instrumentality to the State. A man of any party but that of 

IS 



410 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

public tranquillity and safety would probably speak a language very 
different from what I am holding to your Royal Highness. But my 
mind is profoundly impressed with tlie actual suffering and awful 
possible danger of such a state of things, which is not at all diminish- 
ed by the real innocence of intention, which I am ready to concede 
to all parties. It is not the guilt of the parties, it is the fact of the 
conflict in which the peril consists. It was from this view of things, 
though not then so sadly matured as they are at present, that I was 
most anxious, a year ago, that the arrangement then proposed might 
take effect : every aspect of things seemed to indicate such an event 
as most practicable, and most salutary. The resolution of the House 
of Commons seemed to point it out as a measure of inevitable 
necessity : the exalted magnanimity of an illustrious personage, 
relinquishing every personal consideration, gave it complete facility, 
and that in a way the most endearing to the Irish people, by show- 
ing that his mind was perfectly untainted by bigotry.'^ Strange in- 
deed would it be, if an individual of the first taste in England could 
be so tainted ; for what is taste but the moral instinct of a highly 
cultivated understanding ? The great talents and character of the 
noble persons concerned was a pledge to the empire of what might 
be expected from the measure. It held out a hope of friendly 
adjustment with America, instead of forcing her unnaturally into the 
ranks of our enemies, and driving her to waste her young blood in 
battle, instead of preserving it for growth ; instead of recollecting 
that she might be destined to be the cradle of a Hercules, who, 
even in his infancy, was doomed to crush the snakes of despotism, 
and whose full-grown labours might be reserved, by the extirpation 
of monsters, to form a new system for freedom in the west, even 
after it had been- banished, like the Americans themselves, from the 
east. It gave us at least an additional hope of an interval to 
breathe, by a peace with France ; an event made probable by the 
known opinions of those noble persons upon the subject; and made 

* The Prince Regent, afterwards George IV.— M. 



LETTEE TO THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 411 

still more probable by the incalculable addition to the actual force 
of the empire, in the perfect conciliation of Ireland, which they, 
and, I much fear, they alone, could be likely to effect ; but in these 
prospects we were destined to be disappointed. Upon the cause 
of this failure there was a variety of opinions, but there was a per- 
fect concurrence in the feeling, that it w^as a great misfortune to 
this nation : it doomed us to a continuance of disquiet, and an in- 
crease of burdens and of dangers ; yet we did not hastily give up 
the hope that the difficulties might be yet got over. ISTor can I 
now conceive how it is possible for those noble persons to allow the 
weight of a feather to those difficulties, when they see that every 
event that has happened from that hour to this is flung into the 
opposite scale, and is a call upon them to come forward and do 
their duty to their country. 

" As an Irishman I own my heart sunk wdien all hope was at an 
end of seeing our favourite countryman* return to his native land 
bearing the olive branch ; the only man who seemed peculiarly 
designated for the great work of conciliation ; but even from the 
lip the cup has been dashed — the grating upon the mountain of 
Ararat was a delusive omen of the subsiding of the waters ; and 
our miserable ark is still tossed, not upon a sinking but a rising 
and more angry flood. My own concern, at that time, did not 
spring from any personal bad opinion of the ministers ; I gave 
them then and I give them now, full credit for perfect good inten- 
tion. Indeed, I can scarcely conceive the possibility of a public 
man's having the heart not to intend most conscientiously for the 
best ; but I could not avoid seeing that the vote of the house was 
a sort of presentment against them by the grand inquest of the 
nation; and that the readiness of their master to dismiss them 
was a full confirmation of the public opinion, that it was a blight 
under which, if they did not die, they must dwindle ; and that 
their acts and their language could not but correspond with a dimi- 

* The Earl of Moira.— M. 



412 LIFE OF CUKE AX. 

nislied stature. They have verified their sad foreboding, peculiarly 
Avith resj^ect to America and to Ireland ; their tone and style has 
been undignified, peevish, and exasperating, sophisticated and 
insulting. What else have been their Orders in Council ? ' The 
French are abusing your rights on the sea, we v,dll retaliate by 
abusing them also : — the highwaymen rob you of half your pro- 
perty, we will retaliate upon the highwaymen by robbing you of 
the other half.' But this is a subject perhaps beyond my depth, 
and upon which my reasonings m:iy be partial. There are many 
sad analogies that give us a deep and tender interest in the fate of 
that country. We cannot forget the fresh and daily increasing 
ties that bind us to them as brothers, or children, or kindred. An 
American war can never be popular in Ireland ; and the same 
causes that make it impossible for us to be their enemies, make it 
improper to be their judges. My mind, therefore, returns to home 
the natural scene of every man's immediate solicitude. Upon this 
subject, to almost any other person than your Royal Highness, I 
should have much to say. To you, sir, I know how absurd it 
would be to affect to give information. The feeling and the 
splendid part which you have be.en pleased to take in our interests 
and our sufferings prov^e to us, not only how perfect a knowledge 
of them you possess, but also how much a patient and impartial 
judgment can contract questions Avhich blindness and passion had 
dilated and perplexed, and to what a salutary degree you have 
been successful in simplifying the real objects to which the atten- 
tion of the tAvo countries ought to be confined. Any longer tres- 
pass upon your Royal Highness' patience can go no further, there- 
fore, than very passingly to advert to the progress which I hope has 
been made in the happy work of conciliation. 

"I think the good sense of England must now see, that the 
habits of reasoning and acting in Ireland are not to be judged by 
the interested and distorted misrepresentations that have been 
made of this country during centuries past. I understand with 
pleasure that those historical topics of abuse, which caught the 



LETTEK TO THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 413 

public attention for some time, are now spurned or lauglied at, as 
the venomous and silly effusions of reading without learning, or 
learning without knowledge ; the real heads of inquiry are now 
plain. I know some weight was once given to the distinction, 
that mere exclusion was not 2>rivation. I believe there is now no 
rational man who does not see, that when it is justified upon the 
most degrading imputations, it is the bitterest of all privations, 
because in the same moment it takes away the privilege of the 
subject and the character of the man. 

" It has been said, ' It is dangerous to give power to the Catho- 
lics as long as this objection was undefined.' This acted upon the 
nerves of, I am sure, many good men ; but it could not but cease 
to do so, when they reflected that nothing like power was sought 
or intended to be given. Mere admissibility is nothing like 
power ; mere admissibility can no more make a Catholic a ganger 
than it can make him a king. I am admissible to be Lord Chan- 
cellor of England ; but would not any man in his senses imagine I 
had escaped from Bedlam if I called such admissibility by the 
name of power? It was said, that Emancipation would lead to 
attempts upon our establishments. It is not surely difficult to see 
that establishments can be altered or destroyed only by law or by 
force. 

" As to law, the danger comes exactly to this ; whether a few 
Catholic members could succeed in making proselytes of King, 
Lords and Commons, so as to subvert the Protestant Church ? I 
confess, sir, that it is not my opinion of our Catholic gentry ; if 
they became senators I suspect their ambition would have very 
little to do with religion, and that they would be seen going forth 
with the ministers of the day, as well as their Protestant brethren, 
in the mildest spirit of patriotic toleration. 

" As to brutal force, I can't see that admissibility to sit in the 
House of Commons could be an inducement with any man to burn 
it. I cannot comprehend how giving men those interests in the 
state, without which no state can have any real value in their eyes, 



4:14: LIFE OF CURRAN. 

can increase their wish any more than their power to destroy it. 
I have heard of common sailors making- off with a ship and cargo, 
but never of the proprietor joining- in such an act. I never heard 
even of an Irish gentleman robbing himself and running away. 
If they are then asked — what do we solicit, and what can they 
give us ? I cannot doubt that a generous nation will feel no little 
pain in being obliged to answer — ' We cannot give you power, nor 
place, nor wealth ; we cannot undo the sad consequences of con- 
tinued oppression ; we cannot restore you in a moment to national 
health ; the most we can do is to remove the actual malady in 
which you have been so long consumed ; and to put you into a 
state of possible convalescence, in which the progress, at the best, 
must be hectical and tardy.' 

"I know the hopes of some men are damped by the petitions 
against us. My hope is, that they are favourable to us ; when the 
motives and the means of procuring them are considered (and 
they cannot be unknown) they cannot fail of kindling a condign 
detestation of those who can resort, for any human object, to such 
obdurate and remorseless guilt, as that of exciting man against 
man; of loosening those bonds that should bind the subject to the 
state, and poisoning the sources of that Christian benevolence that 
ought to be the consolation of nations under those sufferings with 
which it has pleased Providence to permit almost the whole 
civilized world to be afflicted ; nor can I deem it possible that so 
just a detestation of the oppression should not lead to a propor- 
tional sympathy for the sufferers. As to the petitions from our- 
selves, we know they are the natural consequences of our condition ; 
they are much stronger proofs of deplorable prostration than of 
real malice ; and happy is it for the quiet of Ireland, that they are 
so considered. When Verres was accused for his frightful mal- 
administration in Sicily, a counter-petition was obtained ; and if I 
forget not, at the head of the deputation who came to implore 
that no mercy should be extended to him, was advancing to the 
senate, an illustrious Sicilian, who had himself been the most dis- 



LETTER TO THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 415 

tinguislied victim of what authority may perpetrate in a province. 
I cannot imagine that the dispLay of such a spectacle could do 
injury to the cause of the unfortunate supplicants; nor can I 
think, that if the Irish Catholic were now put upon his trial before 
an impartial tribunal of the English nation, his accusation weighed 
against his defence, his friends against his enemies, his conduct 
against his treatment ; I cannot doubt that in such a situation, his 
character and claims would be so felt, that he might boldly say, 
' I would to God that not only you, but all those who hear me this 
day, were both, almost and altogether such as I am, except these 
bonds.' I cannot, sir, in regard to the duty of perfect candor 
which I owe to your Royal Highness, avoid saying that the wild 
spirit of aggression which of late time has raved among us, has 
miserably reduced the respect in which every good government 
cannot fail to be held. These contests for dignity, without doubt, 
have been most disastrous. Alas, Sir, I much fear that dignity is 
a robe which he, that will box for it, must lay aside during the 
conflict, and there is great risk that when he has been soundly 
threshed, he may find, like Strap, that it has been taken away dur- 
ing the battle by tlie honest gentleman who undertook to keep it. 
" But, sir, the baleful effects of this violence cannot stop here. 
It is too visible that manners, and morals too, must become feroci- 
ated ; so that there can be no doubt, that if good sense and feeling 
shall not make the edge of authority more blunt, necessity must 
soon make it sharper even than it is. If the rider will not sit 
quietly on his saddle, but will hold his seat by grappling the sides 
of the animal with his spurs, he cannot avoid changing to a bridle 
of no ordinary force. No other way can remain for restraining 
the madness he provokes. This, sir, in my conscience I am con- 
vinced is the state of this country : things cannot stay as they are ; 
temporizing palliatives will not avail ; it will answer no end to 
draw upon our great grandsons in favour of the great grandsons 
of the Catholics, for liberty to be granted in the course of the next 
century. 



416 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

" Mean time, for I more than feel how much I have passed the 
limits, I cannot but hope the best effects from the principle of 
religious freedom, which you are pleased to protect, and of which 
you will be so powerful a patron, and so bright an example. 

" Be pleased, sir, to accept my hmnble thanks for your condes- 
cending wish, that I should have the honour of being present at 
the meeting of the friends of such a principle ; as I find it is not 
to be immediate, I do not altogether give up the hope of beiijjg 
present, but, present or absent, it will have my most devout prayers 
for its success. I have the honour, sir, to be, with the most pro- 
found sense of attachment and respect, 

" Your Royal Highness' dutiful servant, 

"J. P. C." 



DECLINE OF CUKEAn's IIEALTII. 417 



CHAPTER XVII. 



Mr. Curran's health declines — Letters to Mr. Hetherington— resignation of his judicial 
office — Letters from London to Mr. Lube— Letters from Paris to the same — His last ill- 
ness and death. 



In the beginning of 1813, the declining condition of Mr. Curran's 
health obliged him to meditate the resignation of his judicial office. 
While he was in London in the month of April of that year, he 
suffered a severe attack of inflammation in his chest. His illness, 
though by no means dangerous, was a subject of considerable 
alarm to his mind, in consequence of an old but unfounded opin- 
ion tliat his lungs were naturally weak ; a mistake into which he 
had been led from confounding the temporary hoarseness and 
exhaustion which usually followed every great exertion in public 
speaking with a constitutional debility of that organ. There is 
somethino- characteristic in his manner of announcino* his illness 
upon this occasion to his friend in Dublin. 



to r. hetherington, esq. 

"Dear Dick, 

" Really I think rather an escape — I have been confined to 
to my bed these ten days ; a violent attack on my breast — lungs 
not touched — better now, but very low and weak. I can't say 
with certainty when I can set out. Will you let Mr. Lockwood 
(or if he is not there the Chancellor) know my situation ; a wanton 
premature effort might kill me. 

"J.P. C." 
18* 



418 LIFE OF CUKE AN. 



to the same. 
"Dear Dick, 

" I had hoped a quicker recovery, but the fit was most severe. 
I thought to have put myself into a chaise to-morrow, but the 
physician says it might be death, unless deferred some days 
longer. The malady was upon the breast ; I think I caught it by 
walking from Kensington — the morning was snowy and the wind 
east. I had not even gone to a play but once — I am most uneasy 
at this absence from court, however involuntary. I have written 
to Lord Manners., I have no news ; nothing could be kinder, or 
more general than the liattering reception I have met. Still I. am 
not acting like a dying man. Surely I could not prepare to dance 
out of the world to a grand forte-piano; yet they talk of such a 
thing. The town is also full of rumours of a silver tea-pot, &c. 
&c.* What can all this mean ? Doesn't it show a regard for 
our executors ? Mj best regards to all about you, and with you. 

"J. P. C.'^ 

Mr. Curran was in a little time so far recovered as to be able to 
resume his judicial functions. In the long vacation he returned as 
usual to England, from which he writes as follows. 

TO RICHARD HETHERIXGTON, ESQ. DUBLIN. 

" Cheltenham, Sej^teniber 3, 1813. 

"Dear Dick, 

" You ought to have heard from me before ; I have been a 
truant ; however, in fact I had little to say : I am here now ten 
days. I took the waters ; as usual, they bore down whatever 
spirits I had to lose. Yesterday I went to the doctor ; he told me 



* When Mr. Curran was confined to his bed and suffering considerable pain, he could 
not abstain from the same playfulness. His medical attendant having observed one 
morning, that he found he coughed with more diflSculty than on the preceding evening— 
*' That's very surprising," replied the patient, " for I have been practising all night."— C. 



LIONISING. 419 

I had taken them wrong and was wrong in taking them ; that I 
had no symptom of any disease whatever ; he mentioned also, in 
confidence, that notice had been taken of my intimacy with Mrs. 
Forty ; that there were some ladies not far from the well, strangers 
altogether to my poor dear, in whom religion had turned from 
milk, and soured into vinegar ; who had little hope of being talked 
ill of themselves, and who made it a moral duty to slide them- 
selves in upon the market jury of every character, and give a 
verdict against them upon their own knowledge ; particularly if 
there were any circumstance that made it an act of common 
mercy, in those canters of slanderous litanies, to be silent or 
merciful. ' My dear sir,' said he, ' let not women complain of their 
injuries from men, when they are such odious beasts in devour- 
ing one another.' In truth, my dear Dick, it is frightful to see 
how little they can spare their friends, when they can make them 
the pretexts for venting their infernal malice. I confess it has 
added to my sickness of heart against that country,* of which I 
have really deserved so much. 

" You can scarcely believe what a difference I find here — court- 
ed and cherished by strangers; I assure you the question of 
celebrity between the royal tiger and me is not quite decided. 
The change of scene is amusing, so is the diversity of characters ; 
there is a moral benefit in the change of scene ; you look back to 
the niche you filled and you see it not : how minute then must be 
the little thing that filled it ? Here too every body is as intimate 
with me as I permit. I really begin to think that the best tenure 
of earthly attachment is tenancy at will. You have the use of 
the soil, and the way-going crop ; then nothing you plant shoots 
so deeply but you may remove it without injury to the soil or to 
itself. If affections strike their roots far into the heart, they can- 
not be pulled up without laceration and blood. I am not without 
an idea of cutting you altogether: I could easily get into Parlia- 

* Ireland. The censorious ladies in question were his countrywomen.— C. 



420 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

ment and on my own terms, but the object would not justify a 
purchase ; and I need not tell you, I would not submit to restric- 
tions. 

" You will be surprised when I tell you that I have the highest 
authority for knowing that the silly malice of the Castle has not 
had the smallest impression on a certain high quarter. As I have 
jilted Mrs. Forty, ray head is getting better, and I shall try and 
write. I may as well stay here sometime as any where else : I am 
afraid of London ; however, I can't but pay a visit to the Duke of 
Sussex. Will you enclose " Wagrani " to Mr. Reeves, and add 
my respects, and request that he will have the goodness to forward 
it to me to Cheltenham. The post is just going out — write to me 
by return ; best regards to the hill. I begin to think that ' com- 
pliments to all inquiring friends ' generally dwindles into a sine- 
cure. What of the poor Priory \ we have passed some happy and 
innocent days there. God bless you, dear Dick, prays very sin- 
cerely yours 

"J. P. C. 

" P. S. These senators are in bed, or this should pass more free 
than I have ever been able to do." 



to the same. 
"Dear Dick, 

" My last was in spleen and haste ; this is a postscript. I can 
scarcely add what I should have said, because I forget what I 
did say ; no doubt I was too vain not to brag of the civility I 
have met, and consequently of the good taste of every body. Did 
I say any thing of the Italian countess, or the French count her 
uncle, whose legs and thighs are turned into grasshopper springs 
by a canister-shot at the battle of Novi ? She talks of going- 
westward ; as Irish scandal does not talk Italian, and as she can't 
speak English, she may be safe enough, particularly with the 
assistance of a Venetian blind ! Dear Dick, God help us ! I find 
I am fast recovering from the waters \ I think I'll drink no more 



421 



of tliem ; my nerves are much more composed, and my spirits, 
though far from good, are more quiet. Wliy may not the wretch 
of to-morrow be happy to-day? I am not much inclined to 
abstract optimism, but I often think Pope was right when he said 
that ' whatever is, is right,' though he was perhaps too shallow a 
moralist to know, not why he thought so, but why he said so ; 
p'robably 'twas like your own poetry, he made the ends of the 
lines jingle for the sake of the rhyme. 

" Apropos of jingle. I forgot, I believe, to beg of you to send 
me two copies of ' O Sleep !' I wTote it for Braham. I su23pose 
the air not correctly. * 

" Did I beg of you to see and to direct James as to the erections 
at the barn ? don't forget it ; because, perhaps, I may see the 
Priory once again. I dreamt last night of your four-horse stable, 
and I was glad to find all well. 

" You can scarcely believe what a good humoured compromise 
I am coming into with human malice, and folly, and unfixedness. 
By reducing my estimate of myself, every collateral circums-tance 
sets out modestly on the journey of humility and good sense, 

* TO SLEEP. 

Sleep, awhile thy power suspending, 
Weigh not yet my eye-lid down, 

For Mem'ry, see ! with Eve attending. 
Claims a moment for her own. 

1 know her by her robe of mourning, 
I loiow her by her faded light, 

When faithful with the gloom returning, 
She comes to bid a sad good-niglit. 

Oh ! let me here, with bosom swelling, 

While she sighs o'er time that's past 
Oh ! let me weep, while she is telling 

Of joys that pine and pangs that last. 
And now, sleep, while grief is streaming, 

Let thy balm sweet peace restore. 
While fearful hope through tears is beaming, 

Soothe to rest that wakes no more. 



422 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

from the sign of tlie Colossus to that of the Pigmy, where the 
apartments are large and ample for the lodger and his train. 

" Just as before, the post is on my heels ; Richard has only time 
to put this in the office. I shall probably soon write more at my 
leisure. Compliments at the hill : ditto repeated shaking the 
hottle. 

"J. P. C." 

" The Scotch indorser of this gave me my dinner yesterday : 
champagne and soda. He votes with the Ministers. I gave a 
lecture, and got glory for rebuking a silly fellow that tried to sing 
an improper song in the presence of his son. 'Thunders of 
ajDplause.' " 

TO THE SAME. 

" Cheltenham. 

"Dear Dick, 

" I have not been well here — these old blue devils, I fear, have 
got a lease of me. I wonder the more at it, because I have been 
in a constant round of very kind and pleasant society. To- 
morrow Sir Frederick Faulkner and I set out for London. I don't 
turn my face to the metroplis co7i amore^ but the Duke of Sussex 
might not take it well if I did not call upon him — so I go, being 
at once an humble friend and a patriot. Low as I have been my- 
self in spirits, I could not but be attracted with the style of society 
and conversation here, particularly the talents and acquirements 
of females — I am sorry to say, few of them our countrywomen. 
The vulgarity too and forwardness of some of our heroes quite 
terrible. On the whole, however, perhaps, I'm the better for the 
jaunt." 



Early in the following year, in consequence of the still declining 
condition of his health and spirits, Mr. Curran resigned his judi- 
cial situation. Upon which the following address was presented 
to him by the Catholic Board : — 



RETIRES FROM PUBLIC LIFE. 423 

" to the right honourable john philpot curran, 

" Sir, 

" The general board of tlie Catliolics of Ireland feel it their 
duty to address you on your resignation of the high office to which 
your talents were called, and the duties of which you have dis- 
discharged with the courtesy of a gentleman ; the abilities of a 
lawyer ; the dignity of a judge ; and the characteristic integrity 
which has ever distinguished you. Taking a review of a life de- 
voted to the service of your country, and the cause and the interest 
of public and private liberty, we shall ever hold in proud and grate- 
ful remembrance the energy which you displayed in resisting oppres- 
sion, and defending the rights of the subject and the constitution ; 
the independent spirit with which you met the frowns and seduc- 
tions of power ; the intrepidity with which you vindicated your 
insulted and maligned country, and the sacrifices which you made 
at the shrine of public virtue. The freedom and the privileges of 
your profession, so closely connected with those of the public, you 
upheld both at the bar and on the bench. The first flight of your 
juvenile genius was a noble and generous defence of an obscure 
but, respectable individual against a lawless assault of tyrannical 
power. You have uniformly opposed that bigoted, that baneful 
policy, which impiously tries the principles of man by his religi- 
ous creed. You have maintained the great and sound principle 
of religious Hberty. A just, a liberal, and an enlightened mind 
abhors the pernicious system of excluding from equal rights those 
who contribute equally to the support of the state with their pro- 
perty and their lives ; a system which sacrifies the liberty of the 
country to protect the monopoly of a party, and which, by perpet- 
uating division and discord, saps the foundation of all social inter- 
course. You, Sir, and the other illustrious advocates of Irish 
prosperity, are well aware that the total extinction of such a 
system is absolutely essential to the consolidation and permanence 
of the general strengt^h of the empire. Permit us, therefore, sir, 
to indulge our earnest hope, that your splendid talents, emerging 
from the eclipse of judicial station, and reviving under that name 



42i LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

which has attached the hearts of your countrymen, will again be 
exerted in the service of Ireland." 



" Gentlemen, 

" Be pleased to accept my warmest acknowledgment for this 
flattering mark of your approbation and regard. So far as hones- 
ty of intention can hold the place of desert, I can indulge even a 
proud feeling at this proof of your good opinion, because I have 
no secret consciousness that can blush while I receive it. I have 
early thought that the mere fact of birth imposes, by the autho- 
rity of God, a loyalty to country, binding the conscience of man 
beyond the force of any technical allegiance, and still more devoted 
and excusable. To our unhappy country I know that this senti- 
ment was little better than barren ; however, what I had I gave. 
I might have often sold her — I could not redeem her. I gave her 
the best sympathies of my heart, sometimes in tears, sometimes in 
indignation, sometimes in hope, but oftener in despondence. I am 
repaid far beyond my claim ; for what reward can be more pre- 
cious than the confidence and affection of those for whom we could 
not think any sacrifice too great ? I am still farther repaid by*see- 
ing that we have arrived at a season that gives us so fair a pro- 
spect of better days than we have passed. When I view these 
awful scenes that are daily marking the interposition of Providence 
in punishment- or retribution, that teach rulers to reflect, and 
nations to hope, I cannot yield to the infidelity of despair, nor 
bring myself to suppose that we are destined to be an exception to 
the uniformity of divine justice, and that in Ireland alone the ways 
of God shall not, in his good time, be vindicated to man, but that 
we are to spend our valour and our blood in assisting to break the 
chains of every other nation, and in riveting our own ; and that 
when the most gallant of our countrymen return to us, laden 
with glory and with shame, we are to behold them dragging about 
an odious fetter, with the cypress and the laurel intertwined. On 
the contrary, I feel myself cheered and consoled by those indica- 



EEPLY TO THE CATHOLIC BOARD. 425 

tions, wliich inspire the strong hope that the end of our affliction 
is rapidly advancing, and that we shall soon be placed in a con- 
dition where we shall cease to be a reproach to the justice 
and wisdom of Great Britan. The calumnies of our enemies have 
been refuted, and have left no impression behind them, save a 
generous regret that they could ever have been believed. It is 
with no ordinary feeling of condonation and respect that we should 
hail the awaking of a nation, formed to be illustrious, from the 
trance of a bigotry that cannot be refuted, because it does not 
reason; that, like every other intoxication, stupefies while it in- 
flames, and evaporates only by sleep. It becomes us to congratu- 
late on the recovery without retrospect to the time it may have 
cost. Within the short limits even of a year, the spirit of a just 
and liberal policy has assumed a station that scarcely could be 
hoped from the growth of centuries. That wise country has 
learned to see us as we are ; to compare our sufferings with our 
merits and our claims ; and to feel that every kind and tender 
sympathy that speaks to the heart or head of a man in favour of 
his fellow-subjects is calling upon her to put an end to the 
paroxysms of that gaol fever which must for ever ferment and 
fester in the imprisonment of a nation, and to do it in a way that 
shall attach while it redresses, and bind a blended empire in the 
bond of equal interest and reciprocal afiection. We are asking 
for no restorative ; the legislature has none to give ; we ask only 
for what is perfectly in its power to bestow; that deobstruent 
which may enable the human creature, even by a slow convales- 
cence, to exert the powers of his nature, and give effect, by the 
progress of his happiness and virtue, to the beneficence of that 
Being which could not have permanently, designed him for the 
sufferings or the vices of a slave. In your anxiety for the honour 
of the bar, I cannot but see an auspicious omen of your near ap- 
proach to the possession of such a treasure that deserves so high 
a protection. Short is the time that has passed since you could 
not have adverted to that subject without a mixture of shame and 



426 LIFE OF CrRRAN. 

anguish ; but you can now resort to jDersons of your own religious 
persuasions for those great talents for whose purity you are so 
justly anxious. You are certainly right in thinking the independ- 
ence of the bar the only unfailing safeguard of justice, and of that 
liberty without which justice is but a name. It is the equal pro- 
tection of the people against the state, and of the state against 
the people. If Erskine had lived in the dark times of the second 
James, it might have saved his country from the pain of reading 
the events of those days, when the Court could procure a bench, 
but the subject could not find a bar. It is with an emotion diffi- 
cult to describe that I see how easily our hearts are betrayed into 
an exaggerated estimation of those we are supposed to love. You 
are pleased to bespeak the continuance of my poor efforts in the 
cause of Ireland. I cannot without regret reflect how feeble they 
■would be ; but I am fully consoled in the idea, that they would be 
as unnecessary as inefficient. It is still no more than justice to 
myself to say, that if an opportunity should occur, and God be 
pleased to let it be accompanied by health, my most ardent affec- 
tions would soon find the channel in which they had flowed so 
long. A devoted attachment to our country can never expire but 
with my last breath. It is a sentiment that has been the compan- 
ion of my life : and though it may have sometimes led to what 
you kindly call sacrifices, it has also given me the most invaluable 
consolation. And even when the scene shall come to a close, I 
trust that sentiment shall be the last to leave me, and that I shall 
derive some consolation in the reflection, that I have been a zeal- 
ous, though an unprofitable, servant. 

[This appears the proper place to introduce some of Charles 
Phillips' reminiscences of Mr. Curran. lie says : 

" It was during Mr. Curran's occupancy of the Rolls bench that 
I had the happiness of making his acquaintance. It soon became 
intimacy, and so continued to his death. A higher privilege 
could scarcely be enjoyed than his society conferred. Its simpli- 



REOOLLECTIONS OF CUKRAN. 427 

city was its greatest charm. He could afford to discard his great- 
ness, and he did so. There was nothing of the senator, or the 
orator, or the judicial dignitary, or the superior in any way about 
him ; but he was Curran, better and greater than all of them com- 
bined. Ostentation was a stranger to his home ; so was formality 
of any kind. His table was simple, his wines choice, his welcome 
warm, and his conversation a luxury indeed. His habits were 
peculiar — some of them perhaps eccentric. For instance, an old 
person was scarcely ever seen within his dwelling. I can remem- 
ber but three, and they were professionally connected with himself 
or his court. Although, as has been seen, risking his life reck- 
lessly enough, lie had an aversion to anything that was associated 
with death. Hence the aspect of old age depressed him, while 
youth's joyousness semed to revive his own. Of his early bar 
associates, whose countenances indicated the ravages of time, I 
never remember one as a guest at the Priory. But it was a daily 
custom, when his court had risen, to stroll through the hall, 
recruiting his dinner company from the juniors. There were 
seldom more than half a dozen, and it was on such occasions he 
shone to most advantage. IS'o one who did not see him when he 
was at his best can have any idea of his exquisite companionship. 
There was undoubtedly a reverse to the medal. He was occasion- 
ally the dullest of the dull, weighed down to the earth by some 
constitutional dejection. He was very for from being a happy 
man. Social misfortune aggravated a melancholy which was 
inherent in his nature. AVhen irritated or discomposed, he could 
render himself, as I have heard, though I had no experience of it, 
inconceivably disagreeable. This, however, was rare, and, when 
he was in one of his happy veins, no one ever equalled him. Lord 
Byron wrote of him that he had fifty faces : he might have added 
fifty voices and fifty natures, in the assumption of which he, for 
the moment, merged his own identity. His powers of imitation 
were marvellous and irresistible. He was the parish priest, the 
Munster peasant, the coal-quay fish-woman, the joval squireen, and 



428 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

the illiterate squire, each in tlieir turn, and each a facsimile. He 
not merely aped the manner, but he either displayed the mind of 
the individual, or ascribed to him some drollery which much 
enhanced the humor of the assumption. Thus, when asked by 
Lord Byron to give him some idea of Mr. Grattan, bowing lowly 
to the ground, he expressed his gratitude that neither in person 
nor gesture was he obnoxious to imitation. That great man was 
composed of peculiarities. In stock stories his treasury was rich, 
and the perilous attempt to draw on it was generally assigned to 
me. However, failure was rare. He was too simple to suspect, 
and too facile to refuse. For instance, when the vulvar pomposity/ 
of the Mayor of Cork was to be elicited, the wine was tasted, the 
lips were smacked, and the glass held up scientifically to the 
candle. Mr. Curran, this strikes me as very fine claret. O 
dear ! you are very good to say so ; it's the red wax, the best I 
have. I can't compliment you as my cousin the Mayor of Cork 
did the Lord Lieutenant when he was entertaining him : ' Mr. 
Mayor this is very choice wine.' ' Does your Excellency think so ? 
Why it is good wine, your Excellency, but ifs nothing at all to 
some Tve got in my cellar I' And then he followed up his own 
jest with the short, sharp, dry, familiar laugh, which he never 
refused to that of another. When Curran really enjoyed his 
evening, and the bottle had circulated sufliciently, it was some- 
times his custom, when the weather permitted, to adjourn to the 
gardens. The walk was refreshing, and always preluded grilled 
bones, and plenty of what in L'eland was then called ' the 
MATERIALS ' — namely, scalding water, lemon, sugar, and the pot- 
theen — for a definition of which, see Miss Edgeworth. There were 
always beds for the guests at the Priory — a precaution by no 
means inconsiderate. When breakfast came, it was somewhat 
problematical how the party were to return. If all was propitious, 
the carriage was in waiting ; if a cloud was seen, however, the 
question came, ' Gentlemen, how do you propose getting to 
court ?" Ominous was the silence which ushered in the summons. 



IN HIS LATER DAYS. 429 

* Richard, harness the mule to the jaunting car, and take the gen- 
tlemen to town !' One of this worthy animal's most favorite 
pastimes Avas to carry the company into a pool of water which lay 
by the road side ! Of course the host knew nothing of the mule's 
jocularity, and most certainly it never was suggested to him by 
any refusal of an invitation to the Priory. 

"Although himself so admirable a mimic, he by no means 
relished being made a subject. One day being apprised that a 
gentleman then present personated him to the life, Curran affected 
to request a performance ; entreaty and evasion were more than 
once repeated, when he terminated the scene : Well, indeed, my 
dear W., I'm sadly disappointed. It must be an amusing thing 
to see a cat running across a piano, and calling it music. 

" Mr. Curran sprang from the people,* and he not only never 
forgot it, but was proud of it. His associates were not of the 
aristocracy, if, indeed, such a term was applicable to the very 

* Mr. Curran was particularly sensitive to any mark of respect or confidence on the 
part of the lower orders. In one of his little poems he commemorates with much satis- 
faction. 

" A croppy heifer spared by Holt." 
This Holt was an extraordinary man. He was a farmer and dealer in wool, originally 
keeping aloof from politics. Of a liberal cast of mind, however, he refused to take any 
part against his Roman Catholic countrymen. This, in such times, was quite sufficient to 
render him a marked man, and being so, a domiciliary visit was paid to his house on the 
breaking out of the rebellion of 1798. He was not at home, and the visitors burned the 
house and property to ashes ! Rendered desperate by this, he repaired to a cave in the 
Devil's Glen, in the county of Wicklow. Here he found some United Irishmen, refugees 
like himself, and, in the frame of mind in which he was, was easily persuaded to take the 
oath and become their general. In a week he was at the head of one hundred and six- 
teen men, and many hundreds afterward joined him. He became an admirable guerilla 
chief, and, during six months, kept the whole power of the government at bay. Well 
acquainted with the Wicklow mountains, and possessing both skill and intrepidity. Holt 
proved himself more than a match for the king's officers. At length some noble traits of 
character which he exhibited induced Lord Powerscourt to open a negotiation with him. 
Holt consented to expatriate himself to New South Wales, which he did ; but soon receiv- 
ing a free pardon, he returned to Ireland, where he died in 1826. Holt was a very 
superior man of his class, and proved himself a formidable antagonist. He wrote and 
published his life. His men, in one of their forays, carried off, with other cattle, a cow 
of Curran's, whose house was near the mountains. However, when Holt saw the 
initials " J. P. C." branded on one of the horns, he guessed to whom the animal belonged 
and sent it home with a complimentary apology. 



430 LITE OF CUKKAX. 

arrogant and very ignorant persons who at that time usurped it 
in Ireland. He heartily despised them. He never was of the 
Castle or their set. Before the Union he was generally in opposi- 
tion, and after that the Viceroy appeared to him only as a titled 
memorial of the country's degradation. He used to talk, indeed, 
of his poor cottage, as he called it, having been graced by the 
choicest spirits of the land — not culled for their birth from a dull 
peerage, nor for their possessions from an ignorant proprietary, 
but from men risen from the ranlcs — from the Duquerys, Yelver- 
tons, and Grattans, wdiose personal merits flung pedigree into the 
shade. There was in his own manner that easy and urbane 
courteousness which if not derived from nature, is very difficult 
of acquisition."] 

Shortly after his resignation he passed over to London, in order 
to proceed to, and take a last look at, France, now once more 
accessible from the i'dW of Napoleon. He addressed several let- 
ters from London and Paris to one of his intimate friends in L'e- 
land.* Of these the following selection will be found to contain 
his opinions at large upon the interesting events that had lately 
and upon the state of society in those rival capitals ; 



TO DENIS LUBE, ESQ., DUBLIN. 

" London, June, 1S14. 

" My Dear Lube, 

" I AM not many days in London ; yet am I as sick of it, as 
ever I was of myself. No doubt it is not a favourable moment 
for society ; politics spoil every thing ; it is a perpetual tissue of 
plots, cabals, low anxiety, and disappointment. Every thing I 
see disgusts and depresses me ; I look back at the streaming of 
blood for so many years; and everything everywhere relapsed 
into its former degradation. France rechained — Spain again sad- 

* Mr. D. Lube, of the Irish bar ; a gentleman of peculiarly estimable character, ia 
whom Mr. Ourran reposed the most unbounded confidence. — C. 



MODERN SOCIETY. 431 

died for the priests — and Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, 
kneeling to receive the paltry rider: and what makes the idea 
the more cutting, her fate the work of her own ignorance and 
fury. She has completely lost all sympathy here, and I see no 
prospect for her, except a vindictive oppression and and an 
endlessly increasing taxation. God give us not happiness, but 
patience ! 

" I have fixed to set out for Paris on Tuesday with Mr. W. He 
is a clever man, pleasant, informed, up to every thing, can dis- 
count the bad spirits of a friend, and has undertaken all trouble. 
I don't go for society, it is a mere name ; but the thing is to be 
found no where, even in this chilly region. I question if it is 
much better in Paris. Here the parade is gross, and cold, and 
vulgar ; there it is, no doubt, more flippant, and the attitude more 
graceful ; but in either place is not society equally a tyrant and a 
slave ? The judgment despises it, and the heart renounces it. 
We seek it because we are idle, we are idle because we are silly ; 
the natural remedy is some social intercourse, of which a few drops 
would restore ; but we swallow the whole phial, and are sicker 
of the remedy than we were of the disease. We do not reflect 
that the variety of converse is found only with a very few, selected 
by our regard, and is ever lost in a promiscuous rabble, in whom 
we cannot have any real interest, and where all is monotony. We 
have had it some times at the Priory, notwithstanding the bias of 
the ball that still made it roll to a particular side. I have enjoyed 
it, not long since, for a few hours in a week with as small a number, 
Avhere too there was no smartness, no wit, no petty aff'ectation, no 
repartee ; but where the heart will talk, the tongue may be silent — 
a look will be a sentence, and the shortest phrase a volume. No ; 
be assured if the fancy is not led astray, it is only in the coterie 
that the thirst of the animal being can be slaked, or the pure 
luxury and anodyne of his life be found. He is endeared and ex- 
alted by being surpassed; he cannot be jealous of the wealth, 
however greater than his, which is expended for his pleasure, and 



432 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

which in fact, he feels to be his own. As well might an alderman 
become envious of the calabash in which his soul delights before 
the Lord. But we are for ever mistalviug the plumage for the bird: 
perhaps we are justly punished by seeking happiness where it is 
not given by nature to lind it. Eight or ten lines back I looked 
at my watch ; I saw 'twas half-past six, the hour at which dinner, 
with a friend or hvo, was to be precisely on the table. I went — 
was presented to half a dozen dial plates that I never saw before, 
and that looked as if they had never told the hour of the day. I- 
sat gagged — stayed twenty minutes — came back to write, leaving 
Richard to bring me word if, between this and to-morrow, the 
miserable mess shall be flung into the trough. How complete a 
picture this of glare without worth, and attitude without action. ' My 
temper,' to quote myself, ' and my dinner lost.' Can it have been 
the serious intention of Providence that affectation should obtain 
these triumphs over sense and comfort ? and yet, really my host 
is a very good fellow in the main. 

" 'Tis now half-past seven — no Richard. I had just put on my 
hat to go to the next coffee-house, but I resolved to punish myself 
for the petty peevishness of being angry, because every one has 
not as much good sense as I think I have myself I am now wish- 
ing there may be no dinner till ten, that I may have the glory of 
self-punishment — 

' Judico me cremari, 
in continuation — 

' Et combustus fui.' * 

" We sat down at eight, sixteen strong, but it had nothing of a 

* Mr. Curran alludes to an anecdote related by Sir William Blackstone, in one of the 
notes to his Commentaries. In the reign of Henry the Sixth, the Chancellor of Oxford 
claimed the right of trying an action brought against himself ; upon which occasion his 
counsel, Sergeant Rolfe, introduced the following curious argument in support of the 
claim:— t/eo vous dirai un fable. Eii ascmi temps f ait un j^npe et avoit fait un 
grand offence, et le cardinals vindrent a lay et disoyent a luy '■'■ ppccasti ;" et il dit^ 
*^Judica me;" et ils disoyent, '■'■non possuimis, quia caput et ecclesice ; judica tcip- 
su7n :" et Vapostol dit, '■'■judico me cremari," et fait combustus; et apres fuit un 
sainct. Et in ceo cas ilfuit son juge demene, et issint n^estpas inconvenient que un 
home aoUjugc deniene. — I3la. Com. Book 3, p. 299, note. 



POLITICS. 433 

coterie. I sat next to a pleasantisli sort of a lady ; but alas ! a look 
of attention is not a look of affiance : there are graciousnesses that 
neither identify nor attract ; and as to the atmosphere that sported 
on her dimples, I would just as soon have had a thimbleful of 
common air. After all, how rare the coincidences that conciliate 
affection and exclusive confidence ! how precarious ! 

'For either 
He never shall find out fit mate, but such 
As some misfortune bring him, or mistake ; 
Or \vhom he wishes most shall seldom gain. 

Or if she love, withheld 
By parents, or his happiest choice too late 
Shall meet already linked and wedlock-bound 
To a fell adversary, his hate or shame.' 

" Milton, you see, with all his rigour, was not insensible of these 
lachrymce rerum. There is one thing that ought to make us hum- 
ble and patient. When we are close enough for the inspection of 
others, we soon find that ' life is eternal war with woe.' Many, 
too, are doomed to ' suffer alone ;' and, after all, would not a truly 
generous nature prefer the monopoly of its own ills rather than 
fling any part of them upon a kindred bosom ? 

" You ask me about politics. Regarding myself, my answer is — 
I had no object in parliament except the Catholic question, and 
that I fear is gone. Westminster will probably be a race of 
bribery, equally dangerous and precarious.* Burdett's conduct 
has been quite that of a friend and a man : he would have been 
most ardent, and what was to me most grateful, on a public 
ground. I dined with him yesterday; at first the party was 
numerous — the masquerade, about ten, drained them down to 
three, my compagnon de voyage and myself; till one it was quite 

* It was expected at this time that there would shortly be a vacancy in the represen- 
tation for Westminster, in which event Mr. Curran had been encouraged to offer himself as 
a candidate, but he never entered warmly Into the scheme. This is the political project 
to which he adverts more than once in his subsequent letters.— C. 

19 



434: LIFE OF CURRAN. 

a coterie ; with no wine, there's no playing on an instrument with 
many strings ; half of them form only base accompaniinents. 

"I thought to have gone incog, to Paris, but my excellent 
friend, the Duke of Sussex, insisted on my taking a letter to 
Monsieur. [After Charles X.] 

' So now cocked hats, and swords, and laces, 
And servile bows and low grimaces : 
For what at court the lore of Pascal 
AYeighed 'gainst the crouchings of a rascal ?' 

" As to my stay there, everywhere is to me nowhere ; there- 
fore, if it depends on me, I shall drop off when I'm full, or Mr. W. 
will haul me along. If our friends have any wish, it ought to 
decide, and shall do so. I cannot endure to be conscious of any 
retaliating sulk in myself; and I know that heaven loveth the 

cheerful giver. 

" Yours, &c., 

" J. P. C." 



TO THE SAME. 

" London, June, 1814. 

" Dear Lube, 

" Just received your kind fragment. I cannot say I read it 
without some pain. When fortune deigns to favour, particularly 
if there is any port and dignity in her condescension, we are apt 
to feel any declination from the consistency of her kindness. If 
she has justly entitled herself to stand upon a high pedestal, she 
cannot sink into any pettishness without affliction to the votary, 
who may be too apt to fear that there may have been blindness 
in what she withholds. 

Anne Howe^^ is an injudicious example of a woman of talents, 
favouring without much claim, inflicting without much cause, and 
diminishing the value of what she gives, and what would other- 

* This is a fictitious name. Tlie subject of this part of the above letter was entirely 
of a private nature, and is alluded to with a studied obscurity.— 0, 



EKGLISII SOCIETY. 435 

wise rise above all price, by tlie levity of an unequal tenor that 
takes away from her the splendid of her own unilbrm judgment 
in her own justiiication ; it lets down the giver, and abashes the 
taker. Our friends should not have made a point so much be- 
neath their region ; let them, therefore, review and correct. How- 
ever, it should be ever the duty of gratitude, not to let even the 
breaking of a single string take away the merit of the residue of 
the octave, if that had given out all the luxury of harmony and 
feeling before that single key had lost its voice — but, perhaps too 
much of this. 

" Since my arrival here my spirits have been wretchedly low : 
though treated with great kindness, I find nothing to my mind. I 
find heads without thinking, and hearts without strings, and a 
phraseology sailing in ballast — every one piping, bnt few dancing. 
England is not a place for society ; it is too cold, too vain, with- 
out pride enough to be humble, drowned in dull fantastical form- 
ality, vulgarized by rank without talent, and talent foolishly 
recommending itself by weight rather than by fashion — a perpetual 
war between the disappointed pretension of talent and the stupid 
over-weening of affected patronage; means without enjoyment, 
pursuits without an object, and society without conversation or 
intercourse : perhaps they manage this better in France — a few 
days, I think, will enable me to decide. In that object I probably 
w^ould have succeeded; I should have been strongly supported, 
but a conflict of corruption ! surely not to be thought of. How 
would it mortify the discerning pride of our friends to see us 
decked and degraded in a mantle ! 

" So vilely purchased and so vilely wrought !" 

and to find themselves disguising the pangs of w^ounded sympathy 
in the force semblance of gratulation. The advice of Longinus, 
'consider how Homer would have expressed this idea,' applies 
equally to everything. How would the adviser have advised ? — 
how feel ? Will the ' promise so true/ ' for ever to partake the joy 



4=S6 



LIFE OF CUKRA^s". 



and tlie wo,' be performed in sharing tlae joy of what is right, 
or in the sad condolence at what is weak or wrong ? If the latter, 
what would it be but the rising of the whirlwind, and drifting a 
mountain of sand upon the green spot that could never again ap- 
pear ? While fate permits that spot to bloom, sacred should it be 
kept, at least from voluntary weeds. 

" One of our friends asked me how soon I meant to return. In- 
stead of answering directly, I observed that the question implied 
no particular wish, or, if any, rather for a retarded than a precipi- 
tated return. If any wish had been intimated, it would have 
decided me. I did not impute the indecision to any want of 
interest, but I intended to have discussed it at large the day after 
my departure. What is the wish? Perhaps, on such a subject, 
the wisher might condescend to be also the amanuensis. I shall 
remain here, I think, just long enough to get a line — enclosed to 
J. Spencer, Esq. 28 Bury Street. If I am left to my own conjec- 
tures, my stay in France might be for the winter ; it might lead 
to an excursion to Italy, in vainly pursuing ' phantoms that pro- 
mise and afterwards disown.' A proposal towards such a plan has 
been mentioned to me, and by a pleasant man, who has been there 
already. 

" Don't mistake me, in supposing that I meant anything peevish 
in the indecision of wish by our friends ; quite the contrary. I 
really think it veiy difficult to know what wish to form, while all 
things are in such a state of vacillation. The post is just ringing. 
Farewell ! 

J. P C." 



" Paris, August, 3, 1814. 

"Dear L. 

" I received your kind letter, and thank you for it ; ' levius fit,^ 
&c. When I came here, I intended to have scribbled some little 
journal of what I met. I am now sorry I did not. Things so soon 
become familiar, and appear not worth notice : besides, I have not 



LETTER FROM PARIS. 437 

been well since I came here. If I had written, and sent it to vou, 
it would have been a tissue of astonishment, or affliction, or disgust. 
I see clearly I am likely to be drummed out of this sad world. I 
fear war will soon unfold her tattered banners on the continent. 
This poor country is in a deplorable state — a ruined noblesse, a 
famished clergy, a depopulated nation, a state of smothered war 
between the upstarts and the restored; their finances most dis- 
tressed ; the military spirits divided ; the most opposite opinions 
as to the lasting of the present form of things — every thing un- 
hinged : yet I really sympathised with this worried, amiable, and 
perhaps contemptible people ; so full of talent and of vice, so fri- 
volous, so inconstant and prone to change, so ferocious too in their 
fickleness ; about six revolutions within twenty years, and as fresh 
as ever for a new dance. These strange vicissitudes of man draw 
tears, but they also teach wisdom. These awful reverses make 
one ashamed of being engrossed by mere self, and examining a 
louse through a miscroscope, 'complain of grief, complain thou art 
a man.' 

" I never so completely found my mind a magic-lantern ; such a 
rapid succession of disjointed images ! the past, the present, the 
future possible. One ought not to be hasty in taking of bad impres- 
sions, and I need not say that three weeks can give but little room 
for exact observation ; but from what I do see, and learn from 
others who have seen long and deeply, I have conceived the worst 
of social Paris. Every thing on the surface is abominable ; beast- 
linesses that even with us do not exist ; they actually seem in talk 
and in practice to cultivate a familiarity with nastiness. In every 
public place, they are spitting on your shoes, in your plate, almost 
in your mouth. Such community of secretions, with, I think, 
scarcely any exception, is not to be borne. Then the contrast 
makes it worse — gaudiness more striking by filth: the splendid 
palace for the ruler, the hovels and the sink for the ruled ; the fine 
box for the despot, the pigeon-holes for the people ; and it strikes 
me with sadness, that the women can be little more than the figur- 



438 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

antes, much more the property, and that a very abused property, 
than the proprietors ; receiving a mock reverence, merely to carry 
on the drama, but neither cherished nor respected. What a re- 
flection, if, as I fear, it is true that the better half of the species, 
(for such I really think them, when fitly placed) should be so 
sacrificed! How vile the feeling and the taste, that can degrade 
them from being the real directors and mistresses of man, to be 
the mere soubrettes of society, gilded and smart, and dextrous and 
■\dcious, giving up all that exalts and endears them in their proper 
characters of wives and friends, and partners in good, and conso- 
lers in adverse fortunes ! Even before the revolution, manners 
were bad enough, but many causes since have rubbed oft" the gild- 
ing; the banishment of the nobles, the succession of low men to 
power, and more than all the elevation of plebeian soldiers to high 
rank, promoting of course their trulls to a station where manners 
and morals were under their influence; and this added to the horri- 
ble example set by Bonaparte himself in his o\vn interior, putting 
every thing honest or sacred out of countenance and out of fashion. 
Add to this, wdiat must have sent down the contagion to the lower 
orders — the conscription : the wretched men marrying without 
preference mei'ely to avoid the array, and then running into that 
army to escape from their ill-chosen partners; all these causes 
must have conspired to make a frightful carnage in manners and 
morals too. In short, I am persuaded that a single monster has 
done more to demoralize and uncivilize this country than a cen- 
tury can repair. I am disposed to attribute to the same causes 
the growing fanaticism of England, In Ireland we had little to 
lose in civilization ; but look at our late extravagances, and see at 
least how much we have lost in our . own and in the opinion of 
others. For years to come, I see no hope ; we have the anguish 
of being ourselves the cause of not going forward a little in the 
march of the world, but of still remaining a by-word among 
nations. Patriotic alfectation is almost as bad as personal, but I 
declare I think these things do a good deal in sinking my health, 



FRENCH SOCIETY. 439 

which is far from good ; my spirits quite on the ground ; and yet 
as to Ireland, I never saw but one alternative — a bridewell or a 
guard-house; with England the lirst, with France the other. We 
might have had a mollification, and the bolts lightened, and a 
chance of progression; but that I now give up. 

"I really wish the thing with myself over; and trust me that 
wish is not irreligious or peevish, but rather a good humoured 
feeling, that, not wishing to eat more, I may be better by rising 
from table ; ' enouirh is as o-ood as a feast.' 

" I am every hour more and more confirmed as to my ideas of 
society; it is not for those that thiuk or feel; it is not one fool get- 
ting on the back of many, to fly from himself. In France you can 
scarcely make even that experiment, for all here agree that at 
the present moment all society is dead. Nor is it wonderful, that, 
when all the actors on the great scene are changed, the parts 
should be badly performed ; but still I have found society, as it is 
called, and met a great deal of kindness, and some persons of 
talent ; but even there I found society an orchestra, where the 
fiddlers were putting one another out, or rather where one played 
a solo, and every other bow was soaped. 

" At this moment my friend enters ; he differs totally from my 
opinion, saying, ' I have lived single in a great city ; few friends, 
many acquaintances ; I think I have done right and shall continue. 
Sameness would cloy. How many happy matches have you 
seen ? How many faithful friendships ? Too much intimacy lays 
you bare ; your little infirmities diminish respect, perhaps excite 
disgust, perhaps end in hatred. With the same persons and those 
fev/, what chance of having yourself, or finding in them, the attach- 
ment, the good tempei', and good sense necessary for bearing and 
forbearing ? You have complained of being spit upon — but you 
can easily curse them, make a polite bow, and go away ; but that 
would be no cause for breaking a closer attachment. Are you 
not conscious, that you have observed, since we have been so 
much together, some faults in me not observed before ? Have you 



440 LIFE OF CURE AN. 

no suspicion of reprisal V All this I treated as misanthropic 
cant — he retorted on me, ' What is your select attachment but 
genei-al intolerance ? What is the syrup of concentrated affection 
but extract from the wormwood of embittered irritability ? When 
has any man ever found the male or the female inmate always 
equal, patient, and amiable ? or even suppose it, will not sickness 
or death rend the bond, and leave you or them in a desert ? As 
to me, I can bear almost every body ; the grave-digger, I laugh 
at. I cannot weep over myself when I'm gone, and I will not 
over any body else.' He pressed me to say if I seriously thought 
there was nothing in these topics. I told him I had frequently 
been presented with them before, but was not exactly in a frame for 
an ulterius concilium. In truth, it was rather memory awakened, 
than oj)inion shaken, that made me disposed to silence ; but of 
this enough for the present. 

" I found myself all abaft. We agreed to go to la cliamhre cles 
Deputes. One of the members chanced to ha^'e heard of my 
name, was extremely courteous, lamented that I should be a mere 
auditor, but he would take care that I should be placed according 
to my high worthiness. We were accordingly placed aux pre- 
mieres tribunes: the question was to be of the liberty of the press, 
and of a previous censorship. The Baron had some difficulty in 
working us forward, and said how happy he was in succeeding. 
I assured him I was greatly delighted by the difficulty, as it 
marked the just point of solicitude of the public. The chamber 
is very handsome ; the president faces the assembly ; before him 
is a tribune, which the orator ascends, and reads his speech with 
his back to the president — we waited anxiously. I thought I 
shared in the throb of a public heart. We observed some bustle ; 
the seats of the interior, reserved for the members, became crowded 
to excess by ladies admitted I know not how. The order for 
strangers to retire was read ; the ladies would not stir. The 
president could find no remedy, and adjourned the house to next 
day. I was rather disgusted : the Baron asked me what we would 



FEENCH CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES. 441 

have done in England ? I said we had too much respect for our 
ladies to permit them to remain ; he shook his head : I did not 
understand what he meant. But does not this prove, v/hat I said 
a day or two ago (for this is written by starts) to be true, ' that 
women here have only a mock respect V if real, would they have 
dreamed of such a silly termagancy ? Does it not mark their 
unfeeling coxcombry and apathy in the public interest, and how 
fit they are to be the mothers of the Gracchi ? And yet women 
here are vain of their sway. I can imagine nothing more humiliat- 
ing than such Saturnalian licentiousness. 

" However, I went next day. There was a previous list of the 
orators, pro and con : they mounted alternately, and read written 
speeches. The echo was strong ; I lost much. But how can any 
man read his own speech ? He may the speech of the dead or 
the absent ; it is any thing but discussion. The orator swabs his 
face, notwithstanding the sedateness of the exertion ; and when 
he stops to drink, which is a part of the performance, the whole 
assembly handle their 'kerchiefs, and trumpet in the most perfect 
time and unison, to the great animation and interest of the speech, 
and no doubt to the great comfort of the auditors, who must have 
had their secretions brimful during their attention. The question 
will not be decided probably in many -days. The press is surely 
the great sentinel — it gives the light to see and the tongue to 
speak. They say the Russians always eat the candles before they 
swallow the people. I can't tell you how interested I am ; I begin 
to doubt if man ought to be monopolized or his taper, however 
dim it may be, put under the bushel of mere private confined 
affection. Some, it seems, are afraid of the sudden mischiefs that 
might arise among a volatile people, if restraint were removed 
too soon ; I own it never was my notion. But I kno-sf not how 
far these fears may be real or feigned. Such is the fate of revo- 
lutions — nothing certain but blood. The march of the captives 
begins through a Red Sea ; and, after forty years in seeking new 
abodes and strange gods, the leader seldom sees the promised 



442 LIFE OF CUKEAN. 

land, or, at least, dies before his foot has touched it. What is it, 
here at least, but the succession of wretches doing the duty of the 
hangman, till it is the turn of each to be the victim? These 
thoughts often console me. My dear friend, we must stay as we 
are ; but let us look at the history of past and the acts of present 
men, and learn to be patient and modest. 

" You can't forget my hatred of Bonaparte ; everything I hear 
confirms it. AYhen I went up to see his famous column at Bou- 
logne, the poor muse, I thought was left behind, whispered at the 
moment, 

' When ambition achieves her desu'e, 

How fortune must hiugh at the joke ! 
You mounted a pillar of fire, 
You siuk iu a pillar of smoke.' 

" I am greatly pleased to have this man's extinction marked by 
so much abject degradation. These butchers and robbers, called 
conquerers, have kept their dees up by the splendour of thfeir rise 
or fall ; but what a fall has this man had ! He retires instead of 
falling like a b]-ave highwayman, or as a Cataline did : he dwindles 
into an isl-icle, and plays the pitiful tricks of povrer among fisher- 
men and washerwomen. After losing the game of the world, he 
sits down, like a child, to make castles with cards. Even his mili- 
tary talents are questioned. They say, that having no respect for 
property or person, he extorted such sums of money, and thousands 
of men, as made resistance physically impossible, even notwithstand- 
ing an infinite number of mistakes of head and violence of tem- 
per — but here you know I am speaking without book. Still he 
had laid hold of the gaudiness of many, and is talked of with 
regret ; bTit his rising again is, I trust in God, impossible. I do 
believe the present rulers mean very well, though the King has none 
of the vices that might recommend him here. I believe he is 
well taught in the school of adversity, and has a respect for what- 
ever is good and honest. Whatever he be bigoted, I don't know. 



FEENCH POLITESSE. 443 

An attempt was made to shut the shops on Sunday, and to carry 
the host in procession, but boih failed; they were, however, desisted 
from with great temper. 

" I now regret that I did not throw upon paper the things that 
occurred every day; I have often regretted the omission. I would 
advise you to keep a journal of that kind ; it will cost very little 
trouble, and will have the freshness of being ready gathered, not 
faded by forgetfulness and cold and laboured recollection. Even 
while I have been scribbling this, many incidents that glowed with 
life at the moment, have so lost their life, that though I rolled them 
they threw up nothing but Vvater, and would be rotten before they 
could reach you, so I ceased all attempts to revive them. I had 
twenty things, the first few days to say of my host, and his wife, 
and his daughter. It seems they fled to Lubec at ths first horrors 
of the revolution, and the children were born there ; the girl, I 
thought, seemed to have a good opinion of me, and I thought her 
good taste ought to make amends for her want of beauty; and cer- 
tainly she had brought a very scanty viaticum of charms from the 
north. About the end of the first week, meaning to be very sweet, 
she assured me I had the best English accent she ever heard, and 
that it was exactly the same as that of her English master. During 
this chat, in marches the teacher. The scoundrel is a German, 
who went to London at five and twenty, and returned, after four 
years, to teach the purity of their language in Paris. Poor girl ! 
I turned her regimentals at the moment, and remanded her to 
her ugliness. However, all is well, for she knows nothing of the 
crime, or the sentence, or the pardon. The father and mother are 
very good sort of people, and have saved me from some small impo- 
sitions ; for really nothing can be so shameless and abject as the 
frauds upon strangers. Even at the cofiee-house where I break- 
fast, the keeper of it, a very genteel woman, makes me almost 
every day pay a different price for the same thing. It is still only 
fair to say, the French are the civilest people upon earth, and I 
really believe sincerely good natured to strangers. Two nights 



444 LIFE OF CUEKAl^-. 

ago I was overtaken by tlie national guard : I asked tlie officer my 
way ; he answered so courteously, that I ventured a question or 
two more ; he continued the same good nature, and the private 
next behind him assisted in doing the duties of hospitality. I said 
T was afjaid he had led me to pass the line of respect to him, but 
his answer was, and in the kindest tone, ' Sir, a stranger comme il 
faut can never pass it in France.' I doubt if I should have found 
it so in England. Apropos ! I am qnite sure the two nations hate 
each other as devoutly as ever ; and I think their respective imper- 
fections of character will be kept alive by the mutual spirit of 
contempt. Paris will think it graceful to be volatile, as long as 
London thinks it dio'nified to be dull." 



TO THE SAME. 

" Paris. 

" My Dear Lube. 

" I write again, because I judge from myself, and how kindly 
I felt your last, that you would like to hear from me ; perhaps the 
not being able to abstain from writing to the absent is the only 
certain proof that distance and memory are compatible : however, 
the compliment is not great, when you know that I have flung my- 
self upon you as a correspondent only at those intervals when I 
could not bear my own company. The thermometer has been 
higher here lately than at any former time. Close, dirty streets, 
stewing play-houses, and a burning sun, have, perhaps naturally 
enough, completed the extreme depression of my spirits, and made 
me fit for nothing. I endeavour to dissipate, by wasting myself upon 
spectacle — but it wo 'nt do ; this day I thought to look for some- 
thing gay in the catacombs. It seems all Paris stands upon a 
vaulted quarry, out of which the stone to build it has been taken, 
and it is not very rare to see an entire house sink down to its 
original home, and disappear. Part of the excavation has been 
fitted up as a residence in remainder for a grave. We went down, 



THE CATACOMBS. 445 

I think, seventy steps, and traversed more than half a mile by 
torch, or rather taper light, and we beheld more than 2,300,000 
fragments of what once was life. They amount to four times the 
present population of Paris. The bones were very carefully built 
up, and at intervals were studded with projecting rows of skulls, 
with mottos occasionally written up in Latin or French. It was a 
sort of caravan, mostly women : one of them asked me to translate 
one of those ; it was, I think, ' in nihilum revertitur quod ex nihilo 
fuit.' I asked whether it gave her a sentiment of grief, or fear, or 
hope ? She asked me what room I could see for hope in a parcel 
of empty skulls ? ' For that reason, madam, and because you 
know they cannot be filled with grief or fear, for all subjects of 
either is past.' She replied, ' oui, et cependant c'est jolie.' I could 
not guess to what she applied the epithet, so I raised the taper to 
her face, which I had not looked at before, and had it been any 
thing but the mirror of death, I should have thought she had looked 
into it, and applied the one reflection to the other, so perfectly 
unimpressed was her countenance. It did not raise her in my mind, 
though she was not ill-looking ; and when I met her above ground, 
after our resurrection, she appeared fit enough for the drawing- 
rooms of the world, though not for the under-cellar. I do not 
remember ever to have had my mind compressed into so narrow a 
space : so many human beings, so many actors, so many sufferers, 
so various in human rank, so equalized in the grave ! AVhen I 
stared at the congregation, I could not distinguish what head had 
raved, or reasoned, or hoped, or burned. I looked for thought, I 
looked for dimples; I asked, whither is all gone — did wisdom 
never flow from your lips, nor aftection hang upon them — and if 
both or either, which was the most exalting — which the most 
fascinating? All silent. They left me to answer for them, 'So 
shall the fairest face appear.' 

" I was full of the subject. In the evening I went to distract at 
the comedy of le Misanthrope, the best of Moliere. The severe 
affection of Alceste, and the heartless coquetry of Celimene, were 



44:6 LITE OF CUERAN. 

excellently done. It is not only tragedy that weeps — Golgotha 
was still an incubus upon me. I saw the moral of the piece went 
far beyond the stage — it only began there. Every good play 
ought to be just in the particular fable. It ought also (to be use- 
ful) to have a general analogy far more extensive and equally 
exact. Alceste is a man in the abstract — Cehmene is the object 
of his wish, whatever that may be ; she smiles, and caresses, and 
promises. He thinks he feels the blood in her heart, for he mis- 
takes the pulse of his own for that of hers; he embraces the 
phantom, or thinks he does so, but is betrayed, and opens his eyes 
upon the desert : at the moment he does not recollect that the 
loss to him is little; 'tis only the loss of himself — to her it is 
nothing, for it is made up in the next conscription ; and, at all 
events, whether sick or wounded, the march of man's warfare is 
never suspended ; the moving infirmary never halts, and every day 
brings him a stage nearer a la harrier e cVenfer^ the entrance of 
the catacombs. 

"This sad subject naturally turns me to another, that makes me 
suspect that my contempt of this world is not quite sincere. I 
mean the poor extravasated Irish that I meet here ; I meet their 
ghosts as I pass, and view them as Eneas did, 

' Quos abstulit atra dies et funere mlscet acerbo.' 

How can I affect to despise a scene where my heart bleeds for 
every sufferer ? I wish to disperse my feelings as a citizen of 
the world, and break my own monopoly of them, but they all 
come back to our unhappy country. One of the most beautiful 
touches of the prince of sensitive poets is where he tinges the 
wanderings of Dido with patriotism, ■ 

* Ssspe longum incomitata videtur 

Ire viara et Tyrios deserta qua^rere terra.' 

By the by, it does some credit to the character of humanity that we 
sometimes exchange the suffering of egotism for a nobler sympathy, 



PARISIAN THEATRICiiLS. 447 

and lament over others instead of keeping all our tears for our- 
selves. What exquisite nectar must they be to those over whom they 
are shed ! Nor perhaps should the assurance that they do n't suf- 
fer alone be always witheld, because it may not be always true ; 
because for the purpose of consolation, it is enough if it be believed, 
whether true or not : if the payment is complete, is it worth 
while to inquire whether the coin be counterfeit or not ? But with 
respect to our poor exiles the sympathy is most sincere as well as 
ardent : I had hopes that England might let them back. The sea- 
son and the power of mischief is long past; the number is almost 
too small to do credit to the mercy that casts a look upon them. 
But they are destined to give their last recollection of the green 
fields they are never to behold, on a foreign death-bed, and to lose 
the sad delight of fancied visits to them in a distant grave. 

" I continue to feel an increasing dislike of every thing here ; I 
probably sha' n't remain long. I have left some things in Ireland 
unsettled that I must arrange, however I may dispose of myself 
Iftreafter. England can 't arrest me long ; I have never found any 
good in watering-places. My malady, a constitutional dejection, 
can hope for no remedy in water or in wine. In general, the bene- 
fit of those places is attributed to the attendant temperance, but a 
person little given to excess any where has not much to add in that 
way ; and as to evening parties, in a crowd of strangers, I never 
liked them, nor was fit for them : I have therefore gi\ en my even- 
ings to the theatres — I prefer them to English, notwithstanding the 
difficulty of a foreign language. I prefer the style of their stage 
to ours : ours always appeared to me flat and dull, with never 
more than one or two of tolerable merit ; on the contrary, here 
you never find any very bad. A comic nation is perpetually send- 
ing young aspirants to Paris, where of course there can be no 
d<.'arth. In England you must put up with what you can get. l^o 
doubt, it is hard to find any exact principles of acting ; 't is in a 
great degree arbitrary and accidental — still nature will assert cer- 
tain boundaries. In France there may be bombast, and tinsel, and 



448 LIFE OF CURE AN. 

the eternal monotony of amour in their plays is liable to objec- 
tions, lying- much deeper than the mere criticism of the stage ; it 
goes vitally to the morals and manners of the people — it goes to 
make the woman a bad sort of man, and the man a bad sort of 
woman ; it goes to take away the solid basis of every virtue of either 
sex : it leaves the man little to wish, to the woman little to bestow ; 
it annihilates the fine spirit of attachment. What can he feel for 
confidence given on a principle of good breeding ? To fascinate, 
there must be no doubt of its being exclusive. When I am writing 
my bad verses, I would spurn the muse, if I suspected her of whis- 
pering the same idea to twenty other poetasters. On the same 
principle, if you have only the sixty-fourth part of a ticket in the 
lottery of regard, the prize is in fact a blank. How can you join 
in triumph with sixty-three other fortunate adventurers? Still 
these exhibitions amuse ; the acting is flippant and graceful, and 
the music sometimes excellent. The English, who have no 
national music, affect to despise French. It is sometimes, perhaps, 
tinselish ; but I own it frequently catches my fancy, and even nfy 
heart. 

-;r ^ 'k ^ =k ^i % 

" I am not sorry for having come hither when I did — perhaps 
you see society better when cut into piece-meal, as in anatomy 
every thing is laid bare to the student — perhaps it is seen to great 
disadvantage. The best lesson that man can learn is toleration, 
and travelling ought to be the best school. There are many points 
in which this people must be allowed praise — lively, cheerful — a 
constitutional philosophy, disposing them to be always satisfied. 
I wish, as to government, they could be brought to an anchor ; 
whether that is to happen, who can tell ? Nothing can be more 
divided than the general sentiment: the higher military men have 
got safe into harbour, and wish perhaps for quiet ; all under them 
most discontented ; long arrears due. They can't employ them 
abroad, for want of money; and when the deval is raised, and 
can't be kept in work — we know the story. The favour to Bona- 



RETURN TO ENGLAND. 449 

parte is the more singular, because, allowing for his extraordinary 
energy, I doubt if he had a single great quality. It is clear he 
was no statesman; force alone was sufficient for all he did. Men 
here of the best authority pronounce him a man of uncommon 
energy in action, but of no talent for retreat. The question is of 
more curiosity than moment. If otherwise, it might not be easy 
to know what credit to give to these criticisms. 

" 22d. At last w^e have got our passports, and ordered a car- 
riage for to-morrow. We shall go by Dieppe. Neither my fel- 
low-traveller nor myself in the best health or spirits : I have a 
great kindness for him, though no human beings can be more 
different. I do n't think diversity is incompatible with friendship 
or affection ; but strong contrariety, I fear, is. How different are 
they from the volatility of France, as well as from the loud, ardent, 
indiscreet vehemence of our poor people. Certainly it is not mere 
interest that forms the weight to the clock, through the utter want 
of any regulating power makes it a sad time-piece. But I con- 
sider it now as nearly a ' conclamatum est,'' and the insurrection 
act little other than a monumental inscription. 

" London. Tuesday. (A new venue.) After a day spent at 
Dieppe, we sailed : and, after forty hours, landed at Brighton. I 
don't like the state of my health ; if it was merely maladie under 
sailing orders for the undiscovered country, I should not quarrel 
with the passport. There is nothing gloomy in my religious im- 
pressions, though I trust they are not shallow : I ought to have 
been better — I know also that" 'others have been as blameable ; 
and have rather a cheerful reliance upon mercy than an abject 
fear of justice. Or w^ere it otherwise, I have a much greater fear 
of suffering than of death. 

" I had almost made up my mind to bestow a citizen to France, 
and I am mortified at finding any drag upon the intention — yet a 
drag there is. I have no doubt that the revolution has thrown 
that country a century back, yet she has qualities that might have 
hoped a better destiny. It has been suggested to me that a 
winter in Paris might answer better. 



450 LIFE OF CUPvEAN. 

"I just now return from a long conversation with the truly 
royal personage,^ who saves you from the postage of this. A few 
days must, I now think, take me across. I think of meeting some 
persons at Cheltenham. As to waters, I suspect they are seldom 
of use. I am quite decided against them, till Charon pledges me 
on the Styx. 

"Yours, ver}^ truly, 

" J. P. CURRAN." 

The following letter, written in 1815, concludes the series of 
his private correspondence : 

" London. 

" Dear Lube, 

" As I sit down to write, I am broken in upon. In sopth I 
had little to say — the mere sending this is full proof that I have 
escaped being supped upon by Jonas's landlord, or any of his sub- 
jects. I sailed Wednesday night, and arrived here at half-past six 
this morning sound and sad. Kings and generals as cheap as 
dirt, and yet so much more valuable a thing as a lodging as dear 
as two eggs a penn}^ Saturday not being a day of business in the 
House, I met nobody; though I did not go to bed on my arrival : 
the little I have heard confirms the idea you know T entertained 
of a flatness of a certain political project ; it could not pass unop- 
posed, and in such a conflict, the expenditure of money to make a 
voter a knave, that you might be an honest senator, would, in 
such a swarm of locusts, surpass all calculation. However, I 
know nothing distinctly as yet, therefore I merely persevere in 
the notion I stated to you. 

" I have just seen the immortal Blucher. The gentlemen and 
ladies of the mob huzza him out of his den, like a wild beast to 
his offal ; and this is repeated every quarter of an hour, to their 
great delight, and for aught appears, not at all to his dissatisfaction. 
I am now going to dine with a friend, before whose house the illus- 

* H. R. n. the Duke of Sussex,— C. 



THE END APPEO ACHES. 451 

trious monarchs proceed to their surfeit at Guildhall. No doubt 
we shall have the newspapers in a state of eructation for at least 
a week. But I must close. 

"J. P. C." 



• The short remainder of Mr. Curran's life was passed principally 
between DubHn and London.'^ Notwithstanding the decline of 
his health and spirits, the vigour of his mind continued unimpared, 
and probably added to his indisposition, by the constant impatience 
of inactivity in which it kept him. He occasionally returned to 
the literary projects already mentioned; bat to speak had been the 
business of his life, and his mind could not now submit itself to 
the solitary labours of the closet. He still continued to look to- 
wards parliament, rather, perhaps, to give himself some nominal 
object, than from any hope or desire to be there. While in London 
he sometimes attended and spoke at public dinners. Both there 
and in Ireland his time w^as usually spent in the society of his in- 
timate friends, whom his powers, as a companion, delighted to the 
last. 

[Mr. Phillips may again be drawn upon here. He says : 

" He also frequently visited both London and Cheltenham, and 
it was my good fortune generally to accompany him. On one 
occasion, however, having preceded him to town, he very kindly 

* Mr, Curran, some short time before his death, had occasion to consult a physician in 
London on the general state of his health. He accordingly waited on a gentleman very 
eminent in that profession j he had no introduction to him, and was perfectly a stranger. 
The doctor made many enquiries as to the nature of his complaint, and of his constitution, 
and among other things asked him, had his father ever been afflicted by gout. Even then, 
the humor of Mr. Curran did not desert him : he perceived that the doctor did not see 
into the nature of his case, and, hoping little from him, he answered by assuring him, 
" that his father had left him neitlier money nor malady ; that the only inheritance he 
ever got from him was a large stock of excellent advice ; and that so careful was he of it, 
that he never broke bulk, never useil any part of it, and that it was very likely to descend 
to posterity in the very same condition in which it had been left :" — wished the doctor a 
good morning, and left him more puzzled about the manthan the Malady.— 0^ Reg XJH. 



452 LIFE OF CTJRRAN. 

offered me the following letter of introduction. I insert it, not 
merely as my credential to the reader, but because I cherish it as 
a precious and flattering relic of a friendship which w^as the honor 
and happiness of my youth. 

" ' nth October, 1816. 

" ' My Dear Friend — You know how squeamish I am of intro- 
ducing. I do not make any attempt of that kind, for the bearer is 
Charles Phillips, whom you well know already, and I am paying 
a compliment to my own yanity by giving him this, as it tells two 
things I am proud of : one, that I know him ; the second, that 
you are so good as to know 

"'John P. Curran.'" 

" This at once gave me a passport to the splendid hospitality of 
Mr. Perry, the able proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, whose 
sumptuous board made me recollect the saying of Mr. Tierney 
when seated at it : 'I see now, Perry, how much better it is to 
publish speeches than to make them\ 

" During Mr. Curran's yisits to London, he occasionally, but not 
habitually, mingled in the political and literary society of the day. 
He was not fond of crowded rooms ; his taste was rather a select 
circle of perhaps half a dozen, and those, if possible, intimates. 
Among the most remarkable whom he encountered — there is no 
other word for it — was Madame de Stael. Of this celebrated lady 
he gave me rather an extraordinary idea. After he had once or 
twice met her in society, she requested an interview with him at 
her residence on a particular day. ' I waited on her,' said he, 
' as bound in gallantry so to do ; and on being shown into her 
drawing-room, she desired that no one else should be admitted. 

" ' And now, Mr. Curran,' said she, ' on the reply you make to 
me, I apprise you our future intercourse must depend.' This was 
rather startling, but you may imagine my amazement Avhen she 
commenced reciting a kind of indictment against my character ! 
Ay, with due emphasis and little reservation, believe me. There 



LORD EESKIKE. 453 

was not a single item in tlie scandalous account which calumny 
had fabricated against me with which she was not perfectly 
familiar. Every misfortune of my private life, and every aspersion 
on my public conduct, she poured forth with a most marvellous 
volubility. The audacity of the whole procedure almost stunned 
me. I was at first inclined to plead to the jurisdiction and make 
my bow, but then I remembered she had a tongue, and I saw how 
she could use it, so I entered on the defence.' He then recapitu- 
lated, seriatim^ the charges she had made and the exculpations he 
had essayed. How any person, and especially a female, could 
have originated such a discussion, seems inexplicable. Her 
oration, as he gave it, and his reply, occupied fully half an hour. 
The allegations on which she entered were coarse and cruel in the 
extreme — the sweepings of the Dublin streets for thirty years 
preceding, furnished, no doubt, by some of the party scavengers 
who sedulously collected them. However, in this instance it was 
labor lost, as the lady pronounced a verdict of acquittal. 

" I had once myself an opportunity of seeing him suddenly put 
on his defence, and by one of the fair sex also. We were walking 
together in a public thoroughfai'e, when a lady, confronting and 
impeding us, thus commenced: 'Mr. Curran, I really am of opin- 
ion that you might be better employed than in vilifying me and 
my boarding-house.' ' Madam,' said Curran, ' I know well that 
I have many sins to answer for, but, before Heaven, I protest, the 
having wasted a word upon yourself, or a thought upon your 
boarding-house, will not be found in the catalogue,' and he bowed 
himself away. 

" With Lord Erskine, his celebrated rival at the English bar, he 
was in habits of intimacy. He had a very high respect for his 
powers, but, aware of the comparison which the world naturally 
instituted between them, he rather avoided the topic. His lord- 
ship, it is said, once provoked a sarcasm from Curran : very 
unusual indeed, for his wit was not ill-natured. It was a few 
years after the Irish Union, and immediately after Mr. Grattan's 



454 LIFE OF CUBRAN. 

debut in the Imperial Parliament. The conversation after dinner 
naturally turned on the very splendid display of the Irish orator. 
Lord Erskine, as Curran imagined, exhibited rather an uncalled- 
for fastidiousness, and of Mr. Grattan's fame he was almost as 
jealous as of his own. The conversation proceeded. ' Come, 
come,' said his lordship, ' confess at once, Curran, was not Grat- 
tan a little intimidated at the idea of a first appearance before the 
British Parliament V The comparison galled Curran to the 
quick. ' Indeed, my lord, I do not think he was, nor do I think 
he had any reason. "When he succeeded so splendidly with so 
eloquent and so discriminating a body as the Irish House of 
Commons, he need not have apprehended much from any foreign 
criticism.' ' Well, but, Curran, did he not confess he was afraid, 
no matter what might be the groundlessness of his apprehensions 
— did you not hear him say so ? Come, come,' continued his 
lordship, a little pertinaciously. 'Indeed, my good lord, I never 
did. Mr. Grattan is a very modest man — he never speaks for him- 
self^ was the sarcastic and silencing rejoinder. It is well known 
that Cicero, and not Grattan, was Lord Erskine's model in this 
particular. 

"Some time afterwards they met at the table of an illustrious 
personage.* The royal host, with much complimentary delicacy, 
directed the conversation to the profession of his celebrated visitors. 
Lord Erskine very eloquently took the lead. He descanted iu 
terms which few other men could command on the interesting 
duties of the bar, and the high honors to which its success con- 
ducted. 'ISTo man in the land,' said he, 'need be ashamed to 
belong to such a profession. For my part, of a noble family my- 
self, I felt no degradation in practicing it : it has added not only 
to my wealth, but to my dignity.' Curran was silent, which the 
host observing, called for his opinion. ' Lord Erskine,' said he, 
'has so eloquently described all the advantages to be derived 
fi'om the profession, that I hardly thought my poor opinion was 

♦ The Prince Regent— afterwards Qeorge IV.— M. 



EivAL wn^s. 455 

worth adding. But perhaps it was — perhaps I am a better prac- 
tical instance of its advantages even than his lordship — he was 
ennobled by birth before he came to it, but it has,' said he, making 
an obeisance to his host, ' it has, in my person, raised the son of a 
peasant to the table of his prince.'' Nothing, perhaps, could be 
more dignified than the humility of the allusion. But Mr. Currau 
had too great a mind not to feel that in fact he was ennobled by 
the obscurity of his origin. The accident of birth is surely no 
personal merit of its possessor ; and too true it is that the pure 
fountain of hereditary honor too often flows through a polluted 
channel. Between these two great contemporary rivals a com- 
parison has been often instituted. It is, perhaps, scarcely admis- 
sible. There was very little in common between them : they 
were rather to be contrasted than compared. Each had his own 
peculiar merits, and each did honor to his profession and his 
country. The following playful description, by Byron, is amusing 
and truthful, though, as the reader has already seen, he altered 
his opinion much in Mr. Curran's favor. The noble poet is 
enumerating the guests at a dinner party : 

" There also were two wits by acclamation, 
Longbow from Ireland, Strongbow from the Tweed, 
Both lawyers, and both men of education ; 
But Strongbow'S wit was of more polished breed : 
Longbow was rich in an imagination, 
As beautiful and bounding as a steed, 
But sometimes stumbling over a potatoe, 
While Strongbow'S best things might have come from Gate. 

Strongbow was like a new-tuned harpsichord ; 

But Longbow, wild as an ^olian harp, 

With which the winds of Heaven can claim accord, 

And make a music either flat or sharp. 

Of Strongbow'S talk you would not change a word ; 

At Longbow's phrases you might sometimes carp : 

Both wits — one born so and the other bred — 

This by the heart— his rival by the head." 



456 LIFE OF CUEEAN. 

"In the Autumn of 1816 I accompanied him to Cheltenham for 
the purpose of consuhing Sir Arthur Brooke Faulkener (a friend 
and physician whom he much vakied) on the state of his health. 
During his visit, though at times dej)ressed, he occasionally rallied 
and even went a little into society. 

" I had introduced him to two very lovely and accomplished 
sisters, who have since gone to increase the treasures of the East. 
After passing an evening in the enjoyment of conversation rarely 
to be met with, he said to me, 'I never saw such creatures : even 
to my old eyes it is quite refreshing to see the sunshine of genius 
fiying over their beautiful countenances.^ 

" On the walk, one morning, we met an Irish gentleman who 
certainly most patriotically preserved his native pronunciation. 
He had acquired a singular habit of lolling out his tongue. 
' What can he possibly mean by it V said I to Curran. ' I think 
it's clear enough,' said he, ' the man's trying to catch the English 
accent.^ 

" On another occasion, passing a person whom he much disliked, 
he said, ' Observe that solemn blockhead — that pompous lump of 
dulness. Now, if you breakfasted and dined with that fellow for 
a hundred years, you could not be intimate with him — he would 
not even be seen to smile, lest any body might suppose he was 
too familiar with himself P 

" Curran used to relate a ludicrous encounter between himself 
and a lish-woman on the quay at Cork. This lady, whose tongue 
would have put Billingsgate to the blush, was incited one day to 
assail him, which she did w^ith very little reluctance. ' I thought 
myself a match for her,' said he, ' and valorously took up the 
gauntlet. But such a virago never skinned an eel. On the con- 
trary, she was manifestly becoming more vigorous every moment, 
and I had nothing for it but to beat a retreat. This, however, 
w^as to be done with dignity ; so, drawing myself up disdainfully, 
I said, ' Madam, I scorn all farther discourse with such an indivi- 
dual.^ She did not understand the word, and thought it, no 



THE BKEAK-UP. 4.57 

doubt, the very hyperbole of opprobrium. ' Individual, you waga- 
bone !' she screamed ; ' what do you mean by that? I'm no more 
an individual than your mother Avas !' Never was victory more 
complete. The v.'hole sisterhood did homage to me, and I left 
the quay of Cork covered with glory."] 

In the spring of 1817, he began to sink rapidly. While dining 
with his friend, Mr. Thomas Moore, he sufiered a slight paralytic 
attack in one of his hands. He was also incommoded by frequent 
oppression in his chest, for which, as well as for his general health, 
his medical ad\dsers recommended him to visit the milder climate 
of the south of Europe. Preparatory to following that advice, he 
passed over to Dublin, in July, to arrange his private affairs. But 
his friends could perceive, by his altered looks, that the hour of 
final separation was fast approaching. Of this he was not insensi- 
ble himself. As he walked through the grounds of his country 
seat, with Mr. M'Nally, he spoke, of the impending event with 
tranquillity and resignation. 

" I melt (said he) and am not 
Of stronger earth than others. 

/ wish it was all ovei'P 

On the day of his departure for England, after having parted 
in the ordinary way from another of his friends, he returned sud- 
denly and grasped his hand, saying, in a aftectionate, but firm 
tone, " You will never behold me more." He had a short time 
before, when leaving Cheltenham, handed the following little im- 
promptu, as a final adieu to a family there (Sir x\rthur Brooke 
Faulkener's), from whom he had received peculiar marks of hos- 
pitality and kindness : 

" For welcome warm, for greeting kind 
The present thanks the tongue can tell ; 
But soon the heart no tongue may find, 
Then thank thee with a sad farewell 1" 
20 



458 LIFE OF C ITER AN. 

As Mr. Curran travelled between Holyhead and Cheltenham he 
was re-visited by paralytic symptoms. Upon his arrival at the 
latter place, doubtful of the nature of the recent attack, he request- 
ed of a medical friend to examine his pulse, and to declare expli- 
citly whether it indicated any disposition to palsy. The physician 
assured him, that there v/as no indication of the kind. " Then," 
said Mr. Curran, " I suppose I am to consider v.^hat has lately hap- 
pened as a runaway knock, and not a notice to quit." 

" In the summer of 1817 he returned to Ireland for the last time, 
and in the September of that year again joined me at Cheltenham, 
under Avhat mental disquietude the following letter, written a few 
days before to a friend there, will evince much better than any 
words of mine : 

" ' My Dear Friend — You'll think me a sad fellow — so I think 
too. However, you are too clear-sighted in diagnostics not to see 
the causes of my being so low-pulsed a correspondent. The truth 
is, I was every day on the point of leaving a country where folly 
and suffering were lying like lead upon my heart ; and, iu the 
mean time, I could only make one communication, the most 
unnecessary in the world, namely, that I never suspend the respect 
and solicitude which I always feel for you, and to which you are 
so well entitled. 

" ' Now I think you may look io a call at least. I may not be 
able, perhaps, to linger long, but I could not find myself within 
shot of you without coming mechanically to a present and a snap^ 
even though it should be no more than a flash in the pan. I had 
hopes of seeing your brother, but he has deceived my hope. As 
to Hope herself, I have closed my accounts altogether with her. 
Drawing perpetually upon my credulity, I now find her, too late, 
an insolvent swindler. jNIeantime my entire life passed in a 
wretched futurity — breathing, I may say, in the paido post 
futurum : I have happily, however, found out the only remedy, 



THE CLOSING SCENES. 459 

and that is, to give over the folly of breathing at all. I hiid some 
hope for this persecuted country, but that, I fear, is over. If our 
heads were curled like the Africans, I suppose we should go 
snacks with them in the justice and sympathy of that humane and 
philanthropic nation of yours ; but if her tears of commiseration 
should make the hair of the Africans lank like ours, I make no 
doubt but you would send a coxcomb or two politically and madly 

like and * to Ireland. 

" ' Ever yours, J. P. Curran.' 

" His short stay at Cheltenham could scarcely be called existence. 
During that time he was with difficulty induced to pass the w^eek 
of the Gloucester musical festival at Hynham Court, near that 
city. Here he became restless and unmanageable. Music, of 
which he had been so passionately fond, only irritated and incensed 
him. All of a sudden, at one of the morning performances at the 
Cathedral, he took it into his head that the whole proceeding was 
a blasphemy, and insisted on elbowing himself out through the 
aisle ! Remonstrance was in vain. ' I'll stand it no longer I' he 
exclaimed, while all eyes were turned towards him ; ' it's shameful 

— it's sinful — ^just hear him — the black, odious baboon, yell- 

ino; out that " the Lord is a man of war." I'll not countenance it ' 
— and away he went ! Nothing whatever could induce him again 
to enter the Cathedral, and he abruptly returned to Cheltenham 
on the next day, whither, under the circumstances, I felt it a duty 
to follow him. He had had, it seems, some premonitory symp- 
toms in the spring of the year, at which his physicians felt no 
alarm, but which greatly added to his own depression. It was 
but too clear, however, that nature was almost exhausted. He 
fell asleep in the daytime, and even after dinner, and when he 
awoke it was to thoughts of sadness. It was in this frame of mind 



* I have left an hiatus here, out of my high respect for the Attorney-General.— C. 
Phillips. 



4:60 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

that he once said to Mr. Grattan, ' I begin to tremble for Ireland. 
I almost wish to go to Spain, and borrow a beard, and turn monk. 
I am weaning off my early affections, and almost wish the grave- 
digger would overtake me in another country.' He was perpe- 
tually fancying things which never had existence, and misinter- 
preting those which had. He told me he was dying. 

" Poor fellow ! little did I then think that, in a very few days, 
I was to see the verification of his forebodings ! The heart, 
indeed, was still beating, but the tongue — that tongue so eloquent 
— was mute forever. On Wednesday, the 8tli of October, I called 
on him at his lodgings in Brompton. One of his eyes was swol- 
len, and partly closed ; but so little was it heeded, that he asked 
me to dine with him on the day following, to meet Mr. Godwin. 
It was, however, alas ! a fatal premonitory symptom. At eleven 
o'clock at night he wrote the following note to me — the last he was 
to lorite ! It is remarkable that there is not a superfluous word 
in it. In fact, he was struck with apoplexy in two hours after. 

" ' Dear Phillips — Just got a note : Mrs. Godwin is sick ; he'll 
dine here Sunday. If you prefer an invalid, come to-morrow — 
You'd be more gratified on Sunday. Utrum horum ? Yours, 

' J. P. CURRAN. 
" ' Wednesday. '* 

" This note I received at my hotel at seven o'clock on Thursday 
morning, and with it the mournful intelligence of what had 
occurred. I hastened at once to Brompton, and, alas ! what a 
spectacle awaited me ! There he lay upon the bed of death — 
scarcely breathing — one eye closed, and one side quite inanimate. 

" And this was all that now remained of Curran — the light of 
society — the glory of the forum — the Fabricius of the senate — the 
idol of his country. The only symptom of intelligence he gave 
was his squeezing my hand when I asked if he recognised me. A 
few dayfc afterward he seemed conscious of the presence of one of 



HIS DEATH. 461 

his oldest and most valued friends, the late Judge Burton. All 
that filial piety could do, aided by the most eminent of the 
faculty, to alleviate his sufferings, was done. At seven o'clock 
on the evening of the fourteenth of October, I saw him for the 
last time : at nine we lost him. He expired at Y Amelia Place 
Brompton, in the sixty-eighth year of his age."*] 

He had arrived in London in September, where he proposed to 
pass the winter, still intending to proceed to the south of France, 
or Italy, in the commencement of the ensuing spring. His spirits 
were now in a state of the most distressing depression. He com- 
plained of having " a mountain of lead upon his heart." This de- 
spondency he increased by dwelling perpetually upon the condi- 
tion of Ireland, which his imagination was for ever representing 
to him as doomed to endless divisions and degradation. A few days 
before his last illness he dined with his friend, the late Mr. Thomas 
Thompson. After dinner he was for a while cheerful and anima- 
ted, but some allusion having been made to Irish politics, he in- 
stantly hung down his head, and burst into tears. On the Yth of 
October, a swelling appeared over one of his eyes, to which, attri- 
buting it to cold, he gave little attention. On the night of the 8th, 
he was attacked by apoplexy. He was attended by two eminent 
physicians. Doctors Badham and Ainslie, and by Mr. Tegart, of 
Pall Mall, all of wliom pronounced his recovery to be impossible. 
The utmost efforts of their skill could not protract his existence 
many days.f Mr. Curran expired at nine o'clock at night, on the 
14th of October, 1817, in the 68th year of his age. During his 
short illness, he appeared entirely free from pain ; he was speech- 
less from the commencement of the attack, and with the excep- 

* Fiom Phillip's Recollections. — M. 

tHis last moments were so tranquil that those around him could scarcely mark the mo- 
ment of expiration. Though surprised by sickness at a distance from his home, he was not 
condemned to receive the last offices from the hands of strangers : three of his children, 
Captain Curran of the Navy, his son at the Irish Bar, and his daughter, Mrs. Taylor, 
vrere fortunately in London, and had the mournful gratification of paying the last duties 
to their illustrious father. — O'Regan. 



462 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

tion of a few intervals, quite insensible. His last minifies were 
so placid, that those who watched over him could not mark the 
exact moment of expiration. Three of his children, his son-in-law, 
and daughter-in-law, and his old and attached friend, Mr Godwin, 
surrounded his death-bed, and performed the last offices of piety 
and respect. 

Mr. Curran's funeral did not take place till the 4th of Novem- 
ber. His Avill, which it was supposed would have contained his 
own instructions upon the subject, having been left in Ireland, it 
■was found necessary to await the examination of that document, 
and the directions of the executors.* In the interval, Mr. Daniel 
O'Connell, who was at Bath, and on the point of setting out with 
his family for Dublin, having i-eceived information of Mr. Curran's 
death, very generously sacrificed every consideration of private 
convenience, and hastened up to London, to attend his deceased 



* O'Regan (who wrote in 1S17) says: "The cliildren of Mr. Curran who now survive 
him are Richard, who was called to tlie Irish bar, and for some years has retired from 
it, under the visitation of a settled melancholy ; John, a captain in the Navy ; William, 
now an Irish barrister, and a gentleman of considerable promise. Mrs. Taylor, the wife 
of an English clergyman ; Amelia, unmarried. He had another son, James, who died in 
the East Indies ; and a daughter, who is also dead. Of his brothers I knew two : one who 
is seneschal of Newmarket; the other was bred an attorney, and was considered a young 
man of as much natural genius as Mr. Curran himself. 

" The date of the will is the 19th of September, ISIG, and was opened in presence of Mr. 
Burton, Mr. Richards, Mr. M'Nally, Mr. John Franks, barristers, and Mr. Ponsonby 
Shaw. It was deposited at Mr. Shaw's bank ; and the abstract, which I know to be 
authentic, is as follows; ' His real and personal property is left in trust to PhiJpot Fitz- 
gerald for his life-use, witli remainder to Mr. Curran's collateral relations; subject to a 
charge of £5000 for Henry Fitzgerald, brother to Philpot Fitzgerald, called his nephews ; 
a provision on the estate of £80 a- year for Mrs. Curran for her life ; an annuity of £50 
a-year to his daughter Amelia Curran, in addition to such provision as he before had 
made for her ; a sum of £300 was bequeathed to Mrs. Dickson, of Brompton : some small 
Ihjcacies ; but neither of his sons Richard, John, or William, were mentioned in the will 
or codicil ; nor his daughter Mrs. Taylor. Thomas Quin, John Franks, John Glover, 
and Charles Burton, Esquires, were named trustees and executors. — He had in the Irish 
funds from ten to twelve thousand pounds in the S^ per cents, stock in his own name. 
The Priory was the whole of his freehold estate. The interest he had in a lease of his 
former residence in the county of Cork had expired. He also had some property in the 
American funds, but I cannot at present ascertain its amoimt : it is supposed not to liave 
been considerable." — M. 



HIS BUfilAL. 463 

countryman to the grave : an act of aflectionate respect which was 
peculiarly honourable to that gentleman, between whom and Mr. 
Curran a considerable misunderstanding had latterly existed upon 
the subject of Catholic politics. It was the anxious desire of Mr. 
O'Connell, and of several other friends of Mr. Curran, who were 
upon the spot, that his remains should be transported to his own 
country, in order to give a people, with whose interests and destiny 
the departed advocate had so entirely identified liis own, a final 
opportunity of publicly testifying their admiration and regrets. 
Those who advised this measure were aware that he had himself 
(when he felt his end approaching) found a source of aliecting 
consolation in the hope that, wherever it should be his Me to 
expire, Ireland would claim him. " The last duties (he pathetically 
observed in one of his latest letters) will be paid by that country 
on which they are devolved ; nor will it be for charity that a little 
earth shall be given to my bones. Tenderly will those duties be 
paid, as the debt of well-earned aftection, and of gratitude not 
ashamed of her tears." But with this last wash it was now found 
impossible to comply. His will was altogether silent regarding 
his interment ; and of the four executors whom he had appointed 
only one was present in Dublin. That excellent person (Mr. John 
Franks of the Irish bar), had he been left to the exercise of his 
sole discretion, would have yielded to none in j^erforming any act 
of honour or affection to the memory of his friend ; but in con- 
sequence of the absence of the other executors, and from several 
legal considerations, he could not feel himself justified in autho- 
rising any departure from the ordinary course. Mr. Curran's 
remains were, therefore, privately interred in London, in one of 
the vaults of the Paddington church.^ 

* The persons who attended his funeral were (besides the members of his own family) 
Mr. Tegart, Messrs. Lyne and P. Phillips, of the Irish bar, Mr. P. Finnerty, the late Mr. 
Thomas Thompson, the Rev. George Croly, Mr. Thomas Moore, and Mr. Godwin. Mr. 
O'Connell's professional engagements had obliged him reluctantly to depart for Ireland 
before the day of Mr. Curran's interment. — C. [Mr, O'Connell was ai Rath when Curran 
died. He immediately wrote to Mr. Phillips, at London, strongly recosnuiending a public 



464 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

[In 1834, seventeen years after the deatli of Mr. Curran, a com- 
mittee of gentlemen was formed in Dublin, to provide for the 
removal of his mortal remains to Ireland. Prospect Cemetery, 
Glasnevin, Dublin, was the locality selected for his last earthly 
resting-place. The consent of his son (and biographer) was 
obtained, — a faculty permitting the removal of the body from 
Paddington Church was procured, — the exhumed body was 
removed to the house of Alderman Sir Matthew Wood, in George 
Street, — it was thence taken to Dublin, where it was received by 
Mr. W. H. Curran and one of the Committee, — was temporarily 
deposited in the private Mausoleum at Lyons, the residence of Lord 
Cloncurry, the friend of Curran, — and was finally removed to a 
grave at Glasnevin. The attendants were Messrs. W. H. Curran, John 
Finlay, Con. Lyne, and Andrew Carew O'Dwyer — the last-named 
being the person with whom originated the proposition for restoring 
the remains to their native soil. This re-interment was private. 
The pageantry of a national procession which was suggested, was 
respectfully and judiciously declined by Mr. W. H. Curran. A 
massive sarcophagus in Glasnevin contains the remains of Ireland's 
great orator and patriot, and the inscription, far more expressive 
than a laboured epitaph, is simpl)^ the one word 

CURRAN. 

There is a monimient to Curran in St. Patrick's Cathedral, 
Dublin — a bust by Moore, on a sarcophagus. It is copied from 
Lawrence's portrait, and, Mr. Davis says, " is the finest monument, 
so simply made, I ever saw. It is most like him in his glorified 

funeral, declaring that of all, he was "the only incorrupted and faithful," adding, 
" There is a loveliness and a heartiness over me when I think of this great man whom 
we have lost. Charles, there never was so honest an Irishman. His very soul was 
republican Irish. Look to his history in 1778, in '82, in 1790— at the Union— at all times— 
in all places." He suggested that the Irish of all classes in London should be invited to 
attend the funeral, each wearing a shamrock, and that " on his coffin should be laid a 
broken harp and a wreath of shamrock."— The funeral was private.— :M.] 



curran's monument. 165 

mood, full of tiioiiglit and action. In an Irisli Pantheon, our 
greatest orator should be represented at full length, and the has- 
reliefs of his sarcophagus should be his receiving Father Neale's 
blessing, his rising to defend the Sheareses, his delivery of the 
judgment on Merry and Power, and his weeping for Ireland near 
his child's grave at the Priory."] 



466 LIFE OF CUERA^. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Observations on Mr. Curran's Eloquence — Objections to his Style considered — His habits 
of preparation for Public Speaking — His Ideas of Popular Eloquence — His Pathos — 
Variety of his powers — His Imagination — Peculiarity of his Images— His use of Ridicule 
— Propensity to Metaphor — Irish eloquence — Its origin — Mr. Curran's and Burke's 
eloquence compared. 

For the last twenty years of Lis life, Mr. Ciirran enjoyed tlie 
reputation of being the most eloquent advocate that had ever ap- 
peared at the Irish bar ; and if future times shall hold his genius 
in estimation, it is eloquence ^vhich must entitle him to that dis- 
tinction."^ His name may, indeed, derive a still more splendid 

* O'Regan says : " Whatever criticism may have torn from him, — however mutilated 
he may have been by the shallowne?s or inaccuracy of his reporters, his effect has been as 
described; in one comparatively subordinate power of mind, so frequently mistaken for 
genius or high understanding, he manifested taste in almost every subject connected 
with literature. His skill in music made him attentive to the structure and harmony of 
his periods. He well knew that eloquence charmed the ear, and opened the widest 
entrance to the heart ; and he studied with great earnestness the principles of this art. 
So fastidious was he of pedantry, that, amidst his profuse quotations from the ancient 
classics, he studiously avoided this error : when he used them, they were employed as 
powerful illustrations, or beautiful ornaments. He was one of those few scholars who 
stripped literature of that affectation which encumbers it; he broke and flung away the 
husk and shell by which it is too frequently surrounded; and his delicacy fused the 
original sentiments into his native language, enriching both by the medium through 
which both were delivered. You drank the Falernian in all its richness and raciness. 
You looked not to the musty casks of antiquity for the mark of the consulate, in which 
it had been stored ; but you got it defoecated and poured forth in profusion into the clear 
modern glass, sparkling and mantling in all the purple colours, and in all the odour and 
flavour of its -best vintage. To this exquisite delicacy of taste Mi\ Curran had not an 
exclusive title ; in the fine and cultivated mind of Mr. Bushe, redolent with classics, he 
may have found a rival." He adds — "Such was the effect produced, that in taking the 
note of his speech in the case of Massy and Headfort, in which I was of counsel with 
him, I became suspended ; the hand forgot its office, and, till roused from the delicious 
transport by some friend near me, I was not conscious that I left the paper unstained by 
any one note. On observing this circumstance to Mr. Curran in a few days after, he 
said, ' Possibly at that very moment you were taking the best impression, perhaps then 
drinking deeply. It is probable it was then you were doing me and yourself the greatest 
justice.' " — M. 



HIS ELOQUENCE. 467 

claim to po^tlnimoiis respect, for the purity and manliness of Lis 
public conduct, during times when the hearts and nerves of so 
many others were tried, and sunk beneath the proof. Divested of 
this, his eloquence would have been comparatively worthless. 
Orators are common characters ; but it is not so common to find a 
man, uj^on every occasion of his life preferring his public duty to 
his personal advancement — conducting himself, amidst the shock 
of civil contentions, with danger and allurements on every side, so 
as to command the entire approbation of his own conscience and 
the more impartial, though not more valuable, applause of that 
succeeding time which is a stranger to the particular interests and 
passions that might bias its decisions. This period has not yet come ; 
but it may be asserted that it is approaching, and that v.-hen it shall 
actually arrive, Mr. Curran's memory has notliing to fear from its 
judgment. Before this tribunal it will be admitted that he, and 
the few who joined him, in making (in defiance of much momentary 
opprobrium) an undaunted stand against those sinister measures 
upon which the framers have subsequently reflected with shame, 
were but exercising the right of superior minds, whose privilege it 
is to discern, amidst all the tumult of conflicting opinions, and the 
hasty expedients of ephemeral sagacity, wliat alone is permanently 
wise and good — to judge the men and acts of their own day, witli 
the same unbetraying firmness with which they judge the times that 
have passed, and with which posterity will judge themselves. It 
will not be overlooked, that it is the ordinary fate of such persons 
to be misconceived and reviled ; that in the hour of general intoxi- 
cation, the most grievous of offenders is he who passes the cup, 
and will not be degraded, rebuking, by his importunate sobriety, 
the indecent revelry that surrounds him. To have done this will 
be considered more rare and honourable in Mr. Curran's history, 
than to have been distinguished by the most commanding abilities ; 
but in his case it is needless to dwell upon his conduct as separated 
from his oratory. " Words," said Mirabeau, " are things." In Mr. 
Curran's public life, liis speeches were his acts; and all that the 



468 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

reader of tliem requires to know is, tliat his practice never discre- 
dited liis professions. If what he said was honest, what he did was 
not less so. His language and his actions had a common origin and 
object, and cannot now be dissociated for the purpose of separate 
encomium or condemnation ; it is out of his own mouth that he 
must now be judged. 

His eloquence was original, not formed by the imitation of any- 
preceding model, so much as resulting from his individual consti- 
tution of mind and temperament, and from the particular nature of 
the society and the scenes upon which he was thrown. With the 
same advantages of education elsewhere, he would undoubtedly 
have risen above the ordinary level — he possessed powers too un- 
common to keep him long in obscurity ; but it required the theatre 
upon which his life was passed, to give them that exact direction 
to which his oratory is indebted for its peculiar character.* The 
history of his mind is, in this respect, intimately connected with 
that of his country. 

By nature ardent, of the most acute sensibility, instinctively alive 
to every social gratification, he passed his infancy and youth among 
those ranks where such qualities are the peculiar objects of applause. 
The heart naturally cherishes the scenes and authors of its first 
indulgences ; and Mr. Curran entered upon his career of public 



* Mr. O'Regan says: "He found within himself the happy power of giving shapes and 
exquisite forms to the beings of his own ci'eation. Whether passing from images of ter- 
ror to the soft and tender touches of pathos; whether he sported in the laugh of comedy, 
or in the broad grin of farce, he was equally successful in all. If he would hurl the bolt 
of a Jupiter, shake thrones, and appal tyrants, you might conceive it was the work of 
Homer ! Would he move to pity, you had all the effect of Virgil ; and would he excite to 
mirth or laughter, you might have fancied yourself conversing with a Congreve. Such 
was his excellence in each of these departments, that he may have placed himself nearly 
at the head of each ; yet, though he rejected with fastidiousness to form himself either 
on the plans of the sophists, or of those societies which prefer words to ideas, talking to 
thinking, he furnished his mind from the great stores of antiquity, and enriched it with 
much of the best and purest modern literature. By both he chastened the wanderings of 
his own luxuriant imagination, and regulated the branches without injuring the tree ; 
the sap was directed to feed the trunk, not to waste its aliment in idle foliage, or in 
gaudy flowers." — M. 



SYMPATHY WITH THE PEOPLE. 469 

life strongly attached to that order of the commumty which he 
had first known and of which, notwithstanding his accidental 
elevation, he considered himself as a part, and as bound to their 
interests by every motive of symjmthy and duty. This early incli- 
nation to the popular cause could not fail to be encouraged by 
the condition of the times — by the successful efforts of America, 
which excited so much imitative enthusiasiii in Ireland — and by 
those consequent movements of patriotic spirit which preceded the 
revolution of 1782. But, above all, there was in his daily view the 
degraded condition of his fellow-subjects ; a spectacle which, with- 
out any farther incentive, might readily awaken, in a feeling breast, 
much suspicion of the wisdom and humanity of the government that 
could countenance such a system. Nor did his mind, when it 
ascended from his own personal impulses to the less questionable 
conclusions of England's great legal and constitutional authorities, 
discover anything that should make him pause in his estimate of 
the importance of the people's privileges. In contemplating the 
British constitution, to the fullest benefits of which he never ceased 
to vindicate his country's most undoubted claim, his first and his 
last conviction \vas, that no matter by what terms it might be 
described, it was essentially popular ; that the original elemental 
principle which gave it life and vigour, and which alone could give 
it permanency, w^as the subject's freedom ; that this, the most vital 
part, experience had shown to be most exposed to unconstitutional 
invasion ; and that, as long as this practical tendency subsisted, it 
behoved every friend to the throne and the laws to demonstrate his 
attachment, not by a parade of simulated or fanatic loyalty, but by 
upholding, on every occasion, the dignity and the spirit of the sub- 
ject. But, whatever was the cause, whether the original character 
of his mind, or the influence of early associations, or his education, 
or the passing scene, or, as seems most probable, all of them 
combined, he no sooner appeared than he declared himself the 
advocate of the people's rights, a title which he ever after sup- 
ported with an ardour and constancy that leave no doubt of his 
sincerity. 



470 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

It was the intensity of his feeling, which obstacles soon matured 
into a passion, that gave such an uncommon interest to his oratory. 
Whatever may be the opinion of the expediency of such popular 
tenets, there is a natural magnificence about them, when presented 
through the medium of a fervid imagination, to which the most 
unsvmpathising are compelled to pay a momentary homage — to 
those who are persuaded of their truth, and Avho feel that they 
have been defrauded of their benefits, they come as oracles fraught 
with rapture and consolation. 

In all Mr. Curran's political speeches this sentiment of devoted at- 
tachment to liberty and to the country is conspicuous, animating and 
dignifying every topic that he advances. It cannot be too frequently 
repeated (and to attest it is a debt that Ireland owes his memory) 
that in his most vehement assertion of her rights, he was most 
conscientiously sincere. His love of Ireland w^as of no vulgar and 
fickle kind, originating in interest, vanity or ambition. Ireland was 
the choice of his youth, and was from first to last regarded by him, 
not so much with the feelings of a patriot as with the romantic 
idolatry of a lover. To her his heart was contracted for better and 
for worse ; to her " what he had to give he gave," confederating 
all his most cherished projects with her w-ayward fortunes, and 
surrendering to her service all the resources of his genius, in the 
successive stages of her pride, her hopes, her struggles, and her 
despair. In him every man who knew him knew that these were 
not common-place pretences, which he put forth as mere instru- 
ments of rhetoric : the most sensitive of his audience were never 
under more subjection to his enthusiasm than he was himself; and 
it w'as in the evidence of this fact, more than in any art, that lay 
the extraordinary fascination of his manner. There was no elabo- 
rate ardour, no technical impetuosity ; nothing to imply that while 
his lips were on fire his heart might be cold ; but every look, tone, 
and gesture, carried with them the conviction, that if he were 
deluding them he was deluding himself. 

Much of this fervour may be collected from his printed speeches, 
but let the reader of them, in justice to their author, recollect that 



OBJECTIONS TO HIS STYLE. 471 

he is a reader, not an auditor ; that tlioiigli lie may find the words, 
and even these imperfectly recorded, he finds not all those accom- 
paniments, without which the language is but a cold monumental 
image of the thoughts that once glowed with living energy. The 
words remain, but the eye before Avhich judges and juries have £0 
often shrunk — the unaffected and finely varying tones of indignant 
remonstrance, or of tender expostulation — the solemn and pathetic 
pause that embodied in a moment's silence more passion and per- 
suasion than any spoken eloquence could convey — for these, and 
for much more than these, the reader must necessarily look in vain ; 
and without them his estimate of the orator's entire powers must 
be as conjectural, as if he should undertake to appreciate the 
merits of some departed ornament of the stage from a tame peru- 
sal of the scenes to which he alone had imparted all the warmth 
and dignity of life. 

Mr. Curran's speeches have met with some unfavourable criti- 
cism out of Ireland ; and, though many of the objections may be 
founded, many have also been made without a sufficient advertence 
to the scenes which accompanied their delivery. It is found that 
there are passages and descriptions too strong, and even shocking 
for the closet. One of their principal merits was, that they were 
never intended for the closet : they were intended for occasions of 
emergency and despair; to excite passions of such force as to 
counteract the violence of those that already raged; to rescue the 
accused, and not to propitiate the critic. Yet even the critic, who 
condemns the taste that could paint the perjured informer, and other 
public delinquents, in such loathsome colours as the Irish advo- 
cate employed, should remember, that upon this subject his own 
rules will justify an important distinction. A writer who, in works of 
mere invention where he has the selection of his topics, takes a 
delight in dwelling upon revolting ideas, may be justly accused of 
being unhappy and perverted in his taste ; but this is only where 
the introduction of such images is gratuitous, and not naturally aris- 
ing from the horror of the situation. We should proscribe such 



4T2 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

situations altogether, were we fastidiously to reject the only colors 
in which they could be painted. We da not complain of Burns for 
the " father's grey hairs sticking to the heft,"* nor of Campbell 
for the "life-blood oozino- throuo-h the sod."! Juliet is not hissed 
off the stage for her anticipated loathings in the tomb of the 
Capulets : so also it is but fair to judge of similar passages of Mr. 
Curran's oratory, and with this additional consideration, that instead 
of inventing, he was but describing existing facts and characters, 
in portraying Avhicli no language or illustration could surpass 
the nauseous. Before he had described the perjured v/itness as 
emerging from " those catacombs of li'vdng deatli, where the 
wretch that is buried a man lies till his heart has time to fester 
and dissolve, and is then dug up an informer^'' he had day after 
day seen those horrid apparitions stalk upon the public table, and 
he had himself been almost scared from his duty by the frightful 
glarings with which they would have converted the general exe- 
cration into general dread, into the undissembled homage of defe- 
rential horror. J; 

A more sustainable objection to his style is the exuberance and 
occasional extravagance of his imagery. It would be no defence 
of him to say that he could not avoid it ; that in the ardour of 
extemporaneous creation, his mind frequently lost all authority over 
its associations. It was, indeed, the fact, that his imagination did 
often tyrannize over his other faculties, and that many wayward ideas 
were precipitated into existence by the still pressing throng that 

* Tam O'Shanter. t O'Connor's child. 

$ " I have been eighteen years at this bar, and never until this year (1794) have I seen 
such witnesses supporting charges of this kind with such abandoned profligacy. In one 
case where men were on their trial for their lives, I felt myself involuntarily shrinking 
under your lordship's protection from the miscreant who leaped upon the table and an- 
nounced himself a witness. I was trusting in God, that these strange exhibitions would 
be confined to the remote parts of the country. I was astonished to see them parading 
through the capital; but I feel that the night of unenlightened wretchedness is fsist approach- 
ing, when a man shall be judged before he is tried — when the advocate shall be libelled 
for performing his duty to his client, that right of human nature — when the victim shall 
be hunted down, not because he is criminal, but because he is obnoxious." — Mr. Cur- 
rani's Defence of Dr. Drennan^ 1794. 



HIS DESULTORY PREPARATION. 473 

followed before his taste had time to suppress or adorn them. This 
defect was perhaps in some degree organic; perhaps discipline 
and caution might have corrected it ; but unless he had altogether 
changed his modes of intellectual exercise, it could scarcely be 
expected that any care could have entirely removed it. 

The dangers of offending against good taste depend in a great 
measure upon the class of the mental powers that are employed. 
They who confine themselves to the exercise of those of reasoning, 
may continue from day to day to give extemporaneous utterance to 
every idea ; and though they fail in their logic with every breath, 
may still avoid the smallest violation of good taste. But when the 
mind ascends to subjects of invention and imagination, there is no 
longer this security. Where is the poet, the most intuitively cor- 
rect, who does not reject much which at first had pleased ; whose 
mind has not been even incommoded by the intrusion of many fan- 
tastic combinations, which instead of venturing to express in lan- 
guage, he crushes at the moment of their birth ? And it is only 
by exercising this right over the children of its fancy, by condemn- 
ing the deformed to an early death, that of those who are permit- 
ted to survive, none are without beauty and proportion. The ora- 
tor who in the same way aspires to create, and who, like Mr. Cur- 
ran, defers the work till he is excited by the presence of a pub- 
lic audience, has- to encounter all the dangers of the poet, without 
enjoying his privileges. The same fervour and impetuosity that 
lead to felicity, will often hurry him into extravagance : the 
latter, once produced, cannot be recalled — he has no leisure to 
soften, and mould, and reconcile ; and hence conceptions, which 
in his cooler moments he would have suppressed, or have 
rendered worthy of himself, remain irrevocably accusers of his 
taste. 

JBut perhaps this subject will be most readily explained, by ad- 
verting to Mr. Curran's habits of preparation for public speaking. 
From tihe first experiment of his talents, in London, till he had at- 
tained some eminence at the bar, he never composed his speeches 



4:74: 



LIFE OF CURRAN. 



for the purpose of delivering- them from memory ; but both at the 
.debating societies, and during his early years at the bar, he used 
to assist his mind by ample notes upon the questions to which he 
had to speak. When his reputation rose, he for a while adopted 
the former method ; but such written attempts having proved com- 
paratively stiif and cold, and in every way greatly inferior to his 
more extemporaneous effusions, his own judgment, and the advice 
of his friends, induced him for ever to abandon that plan, and ad- 
here to the one more suited to the habits and character of his 
mind. 

There was something peculiar and desultory in his manner of 
considering the important questions that he had to meet. He very 
rarely retired formally to his closet : it was as he walked in the 
hall of the courts, or as he rode between Dublin and his country 
seat, or during his evening strolls through his own grounds,"^^ that 

* On letting his beautiful and tasty residence in the county of Cork, which was distant 
from the lakes of Kiilarney but one short day's journey, he became the purchaser of a 
country-seat near Rathfarnham, on the slope of those delightful hills hanging over the 
Marquis of Ely's demesne. The scenery before the windows is of interminable expanse, 
and commanding one of the richest and best dressed landscapes in Ireland, including the 
Bay of Dublin, the ship?, the opposite hill of Howth, the pier, the light-house, and a long 
stretch of the county of Dublin ; on the eastern side May-puss Craggs and obelisks, and a 
long range of hills. The house is plain, but substantial, and the grounds peculiarly well 
laid out, and neatly kept; sheltered to the south by a bridge of mountains; and tliough its 
elevation is considerable and commanding, it is relatively a plain or flattening on the 
mountain's side; its prospects are delightful. It was, as he said, a toilette, at which one 
might dress and shave for eternity. Situated about four miles from Dublin, and a sort of 
centre beiween the seats of his friend Mr. G iltan in the county of Wicklow, and the late 
Mr. George Ponsonby in the county of Kildare, and about eight miles from each. The 
country surrounding it is enchanting, and the neighbourhood populous and good. Within 
the short distance of two miles on the city side, was Lord Avonmore's seat of Fortfield, 
the residence of tlie present Master of the Rolls, Sir William M'Mahon. The houses of 
many other gentlemen of his friendship and of his profession were thickly crowded 
round him. Here it was he chose to pass in study,- or in society, those hours which were 
not devoted to business ; and here he generally entertained his friends. He brought no- 
thing from his former country residence but its name (the Priory). His table was frugal ; 
plain, yet comfortable ; but his wines were the best and choicest, in which he did not 
generally more indulge, than in the ordinary manner of a gentleman. His deviations 
from sobriety were not frequent, and made but exceptions to his usual habits of temper- 
ance. Here it was, like Achilles in his tent, he delighted his heart with his harp^ the vio- 
loncello was his instrument, and from this he did not desire reputation for skill fn that de- 



EXTEMPOiiANEOUS ELOQUENCE. 475 

he meditated his subjects. Sometimes as he lay in bed, he had 
(like Rousseaii,f and \yitli a more fortunate memory) creative visita- 
tions, which he often declared were to him more delightful than 
repose. One of his most usual and favourite times of meditation, 
was when he had his violin or violoncello in his hand : he would 
thus forget liimself for hours, running voluntaries over the strings, 
or executing some trivial air, while his imagination was far away, 
collecting its forces for the coming emergency. 

Many of his finest passages were extemporaneous bursts, but many 
were thus prepared. It is, however, worth observing, that he seldom 
committed them verbally to memory. He contemplated the 



lightful art. He sought no more than to feel the pleasure it imparted ; nor am I apprised 
that he ever aspired to the glory of exhibiting even at a concert. An Irish giant used to 
come from the mountains to play upon it, and said it was the biggest fiddle he ever met; 
but that it was very awkward with but three strings, for so he sometimes found it. Here 
also it was that he composed much more than as yet has met the eye. Still it may be 
hoped, that a criticism of Milton's Paradise Lost may survive ihe wreck of works which a 
fastidious and refined taste may have too rapidly condemned. Leisure and revision may 
give a finish wliich may not satisfy himself, yet the efforts of such a mind, however care- 
lessly flung off, nmst always be gratifying to curiosity. At his dinners two peculiarities 
appeared : one constantly, that of having dinner served to the minute of five o'clock. 
This was frequently inconvenient to others, but as he defin«d a good dinner to be two 
dishes and fi^e o'clock, it sometimes occurred, that tliere were no other terms to be inclu- 
ded in this definition. He drank a few glasses of port at dinner, " to keep," as he said, 
" the wet of the claret out of his stomach." The second peculiarity was, that you fre- 
quently met at his table persons seldom undistinguished, though often unknown to each 
other. And in this he often resembled his friend .Tohn HorneTooke, who at his feasts at 
Wimbledon had persons of all tongues, nations, characters, and qualities. His own habits 
were plain and frugal, though the pomp and parade of good living did not appal him. He 
sustained through life a preference of the comforts to the luxuries of the table. Liqueurs 
being served after dinner, noyeau, persico, and everything recherche ; malmsey, Madeira, 
hock, &c., Mr. Curran being asked which he would prefer, seized a bottle of the lattei-, 
and said, " Hoc erat in votis. A young gentleman who sat near him observed that the 
liqueurs were much better, and importunately recommended persico, adding that he who 
was fond of the Medes, should love the Persians also : to which Mr. Curran instantly re- 
plied, Persicos odi puer. — O'Regan. 

* " Je meditois dans mon lit a yeux fermes, et je tournois et retournois dans ma tete 
mes periodes avec des peines incroyables ; puis quand j'etois parvenu a en etre content, 
je les deposois dans ma memoire, jusqu'a ce que jepusse les mettre sur le papier ; mais le 
temps de me lever et de m'habiller me faisoit tout perdre, et quand je m'etois mis a mon 
papier, il ne me venoit presque plus rien de ce que j'avois compose." — Confessioiis di 
liousseau. 



476 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

topics and images until lie had secured them beyond the danger of 
escape, and when the occasion came, and the same train of asso- 
ciations was revived, his mind not so much recollected, as repeated 
anew the operations by which it had originally created. He had 
not the words of a single sentence by heart ; he had the leading 
ideas, and trusted to their reappearance to recall the same diction 
and imagery which had been suggested at the first interview. But 
it almost invariably happened that his own expectations were far 
exceeded, and that wdien his mind came to be more intensely heat- 
ed by his subject, and by that inspiring confidence which a public 
audience seldom fails to infuse into all who are sufiiciently gifted 
to receive it, a multitude of new ideas, adding vigour or ornament, 
were given oft"; and it also happened, that in the same prolific mo- 
ments, and as almost their inevitable consequence, some crude and 
fentastic notions escaped ; which, if they impeached their author's 
taste, at least leave him the merit of a splendid fault which none 
but men of genius can commit. 

This was the account that he gave of his own intellectual 
habits, which he recommended to the imitation of all who aspired 
to excel in oratory ; for according to his idea of popular 
eloquence, a facility of extemporaneous creation and arrangement, 
and of adapting and modifying according to the occasion, the pro- 
duce of previous meditation, was indispensable : vnthout it a 
person might be an elegant composer, and a skilful reciter and 
actor, but being necessarily at the mercy of every unforeseen con- 
tingency, could never be an orator. The practice of writing 
speeches and delivering them from memory, he strongly repro- 
bated ; he considered that it not only cut off the speaker from the 
benefit of those accidental bursts which so often turn the fortune 
of the day, and for which no anticipating sagacity can provide ; 
but that when exclusively persevered in for any time, it directly 
tended to debilitate his mind ; that instead of habituating him to 
a manly confidence in his own resources, and to that generous 
surrender of himself to the enthusiasm of the moment, which can 



EXTEMPORE SPEAKINa. 4:77 

almost impart the gift of miracles to tliose who put their faith in 
it, and which, even where it leads astray, Avill cany away the 
audience in its train, it generated a noxious taste for verbal linery 
— for epigram, antithesis, and inanimate declamation ; and along 
with this, a pusillanimous and irrecoverable apprehension of failing 
to be correct, so destructive of that spirit of adventure, and occa- 
sionally heedless intrepidity, v.dthout which there is no plunging 
into the deeper recesses of human passions. So strongly was he 
impressed with the opinion that real eloquence demanded the 
fullest measure of extemporaneous ardour and ability, that when, 
about a year before his death, he was urgently solicited to address 
a jury in defence of a friend against whom an action for a libel 
was depending, he could not bring himself to comply v>dth the 
request, however honourable and complimentary •* assigning as 
one of his reasons, his suspicion that after a desuetude of ten years, 
added to the more temperate and hesitating views which his 
judicial functions during that period had imposed, his mind might 
have become too rigid to yield to all the impulses of popular 
emotion with the same prompt and fortunate reliance which had 
secured the triumphs of his younger days.f 

He was unaffectedly communicative to his young friends of 
the bar who consulted him on these subjects.]; Amongst other 



* To have done so would have been a violation of all professional precedent. In 
Great Britain and Ireland, a man who has once occupied the Bench never returns to 
the Bar.— M. 

+ One of Mr. Curran's greatest and longest efforts was his defence of Mr. Hamilton 
Rowan. The following is a copy of the notes from which he spoke upon that occasion, 
and their small number will show his dependence upon his own mind, without much 
mechanical aid. 

" To arms. — 2°. Reform — 3°. Catholic emancip. — 4°. Convention — now unlawful — 
Consequence of conviction — Trials before revolution — Drowned — Lambert — Muir — 
Character of R. — furnace, &c. — Rebellion smothered stalks — Redeeming spirit." — C. 

X O'Regiin says, " For the many years of his practice in the hall, his wit made an 
Eera ; there went by no day that did not furnish something new from him. The young 
and old of the bar were so fascinated with his effusions, that they got rapid circulation ; 
they were echoed through the courts, and did, like sound, propagate themselves in every 
direction. You had them in the streets, and at the table; they were as certainly sup- 
plied, and made as necessary apart of the entertainment, as the wine: they travelled 



478 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

particulars, lie used to tell them, that the peculiarities of his own 
person had had an influence in formino- his style of public speak- 
ing. He was conscious that it wanted dignity and grace, and in 
the apprehension that vehemence might expose him to ridicule, he 
originally proposed to himself to become persuasive by a mild, 
expostulatory manner ; but when he foi'med this resolution he was 
unaware of his own resources ; his genius, as soon as exasperated 
into an exertion of its force, prevailed over all the suggestions of 
modest precaution. Still it may be observed in almost all his 
speeches, that the first propensity is perpetually declaring itself; 
that in the midst of all his arguments, and impetuosity, and 
invective, he never forgets to implore. 

But independent of any study and design upon his part, it 
was here that he was by nature pre-eminently qualified to succeed. 
His speeches upon political subjects contain many afiecting speci- 
mens of his pathetic powers ; but it was in questions confined to 
individual interests, where the domestic or social relations had 
been abused, that he exhibited the entire extent of his command 
over all the softer emotions of the human breast. For the secret 
of this power he was little indebted to books, or to the artifices of 
rhetoric. Its source was in his habitually intense sensibility to the 
affecting scenes of real life, moi'e peculiarly to those of domestic 
happiness or aftection, as he witnessed them in their most natural 
and tender forms, among those humble classes Avith which his 
original condition had first familiarised him. While yet a boy he 
caught an inspiration of the plaintive genius of his country, where, 
after all, the national genius prefers to dwell — beneath the 
peasant's roof. According to his own account, it was in the Irish 
cabin that he first learned to w^ep for others. He found there, 
what all who stoop to enter may find, the rude elements of the 



with you into the country ; they were domesticated everywhere ; they pleased youth and 
delighted old age. When he left the practice of his profession, he did not leave the hall. 
He frequently descended from the bench, and distracted in groups of admirers his over 
active and over ardent mind."— M. 



PASSIONATE OKATORY. 479 

finest and softest affections. It was there that his young fancy, 
powerfully impressed with the living spectacle of all those homely 
but vigorous movements of undisguised nature which touch the 
heart the most, unconsciously prepared itself for those pathetic 
descriptions at which future assemblies were to melt : and when 
the occasion came of calling upon his hearers for their sympathy, 
he had only to present fo their imagination some of those pictures 
of tenderness or distress over which he had so often wept himself. 

His pathos, however, was not confined to such delineations ; 
much of its influence depends upon the solemn associations which 
it raises, upon its alliance with emotions of a higher order than 
individual sufiering can produce. The pangs of a single victim 
may appeal most forcibly to our pity, but the more intense the 
feeling, the more it is in danger of failing in dignity. One of the 
charms of Mr. Curran's pathos is, that it is so ofte-ii connected with 
patriotic sorrow, or with more extensive and enlightened regrets 
for the general fate of nations. He represents the great principles 
of freedom as outraged and depressed, and deplores their fall ; but 
we are perpetually reminded that they deserved a nobler destiny, 
and are made to feel the same sentiment of exalted melancholy, 
with which we would bend over the grave of one of the illustrious 
dead. We may lament the loss as irretrievable, but in the utmost 
extremity of our grief, we are elevated by the consciousness that 
we bear an honourable testimony to our own sensibility to departed 
worth. 

But it was not only by successful appeals to any single passion 
that he surpassed every forensic speaker of his country ; the won- 
der that he excited was owing to the rapidity of his transitions 
from passion to passion, from the deepest emotions that agitate 
the soul up to the liveliest combinations of a playful imagination. 
And yet this, the most extraordinary and distinguishing of his 
powers, can never be fully comprehended by those who know him 
only through his graver and recorded efforts. It is upon the lat- 
ter that his general and lasting fame must now depend ; but in 



480 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

Ireland, while any of his cotemporaries who heard him survive, 
and perhaps long after they all shall have followed him to the 
grave, his name will enjoy a peculiar and scarcely less brilliant 
reputation in the traditional accounts of the numberless unpre- 
meditated and magical effusions that have been no otherwise 
preserved ; and which in the estimation of his admiring hearers 
would alone have rendered him the ornament and boast of the 
Irish bar. For more than twenty years those astonishingly varied 
talents, upon which the critic may now fear to pass too unqualified 
an encomium, converted the Irish courts of justice into a theatre 
of popular recreation, whither day after day the multitude delighted 
to flock to behold the orator in whom they gloried, going, in the 
space of a few^ moments, his rounds of the human passions and 
the human faculties; alternately sublime, indignant, sarcastic, 
subtle, playful, pathetic. 

This extreme versatility, if Mr. Curran be contemplated as a 
model, may be deemed a defect, but Ibr every practical purpose 
its success was so decided as to justify his adopting it. Had his 
eloquence been more scliolastic, had ev-ery topic of persuasion 
been selected with an eye to rhetorical observances, he v/ould have 
escaped some literary reproaches, but he would have gained fewer 
triumphs. The juries among whom he was thrown, and for whom 
he originally formed his style, were not fastidious critics ; they 
were more usually men abounding in rude unpolished sympathies, 
and who were ready to surrender the treasure, of which they 
scarcely knew the value, to him that offered them the most 
alluring toys. Whatever might have been his own better taste, as 
an advocate he soon discovered, that the surest way to persuade 
was to conciliate by amusing them. . With them he found that 
his imagination might revel unrestrained ; that, when once the 
w^ork of intoxication was begun, every wayward fancy and wild 
expression was as acceptable and effectual as the most refined wit ; 
and that the favour which they would have refused to the unat- 
tractive reasoner or to the too distant and formal orator, they had 



IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. 481 

not the firmness to Avitlihold, when soHcited with the gny per- 
suasive familiarity of a companion. These careless or licentious 
habits, encouraged by early applause and victory, were ne\'er 
thrown aside, and we can observe in almost all his productions, no 
matter how august the audience, or how solemn the occasion, that 
his mind is perpetually relapsing into its primitive indulgences. 

But whatever judgment may now be passed upon those wander- 
ings of fancy by which those who were actually allured away were 
too charmed to utter a reproach, it is impossible to withhold our 
admiration of those mental qualities in which the beauties and 
imperfections of Mr. Curran's eloquence had equally their origin. 
They both originated in that intense activity of the imaginative 
faculty which was the predominant characteristic of his mind. It 
was in the exceeding richness of this, that consisted the essential 
distinctive originality of his style. It was not that his reasonings 
were subtle, his topics imposing, or his periods flowing ; all of these 
may be found in others ; but that what he passionately conceived, 
he could convey in passion's proper idiom ; that his mind had 
familiar access to a w^orld of splendid and vigorous illustration, 
w^hence it could select at pleasure the clothing that might best 
adorn, or ennoble every favourite idea ; it was that nature, in the 
profuseness of her bounty, " filling even to overflowing," had " o'er 
informed " him wdth that supplemental poetic sense, which, dis- 
daining to recognise in objects their homely realities, is for ever 
delighting to invest them with attributes not their own, raising 
what is low, animating what is cold, veiling what is deformed, or 
again fearlessly tearing away the veil where some high moral pur- 
pose demands that the deformity beneath should be exposed and 
exaggerated, and thus by the agency of its own creations, impart- 
ing to what the vulgar eye might view with most indifterence, 
imagined charms or visionary horror. 

The images in which Mr. Curran excelled w^ere not of that order 
which it requires, but a simple process of intellect, unconnected 
with much mental or physical emotion to produce. There are 

21 



4:82 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

some cultivated minds, to which so much varied knowledge is at 
all times present, that whatever be the subject of their thoughts, 
innumerable resemblances force themselves upon them, rendering 
them j^rofusely figurative, but evidently without for a moment 
disturbing their tranquillity. But the Irish advocate's finest con- 
ceptions Avere the growth of the deepest sensibility. In his 
pathetic and descrijDtive bursts, so impressively did his language 
communicate to others the full extent of his emotions, that it 
might be said of him that at such moments he "felt aloud;" that 
his words Avere but the audible throbbings of his bosom labouring 
to vent itself in rapid, irregular, and abrupt gushes from the excess 
of feeling that oppressed it. 

In producing this electric sympath}^ between the orator and his 
audience, there Avas something more than art can teach or than 
nature gives to many. Its original source Avas in his heart and 
spirit as much as in his talents; in his uncompromising and impas- 
sioned identification of himself Avith his subjects ; in that chival- 
rous devotion to Avhatever principle he espoused, which impelled 
him boldly to defy and silence its adversaries, by the proud tender 
of his OAvn individual responsibility for its truth and honour. In 
this, there Avas much that belonged to the man, no less than to 
the advocate — much of prcA'ious character — of personal and men- 
tal intrepidity — of profound moral sensibility, and its companion, 
moral pride, upon all the great questions of human rights and 
obligations. It was this extreme sensibility, combined (if not 
itself occasioned by) a superior intellect, that filled Mr. Curran's 
style Avith so much bold and vivid imagery. For it Avould be 
most unjust to attribute to him any deficiency of logical poAvers, 
because he so frequently supported the cause of freedom and 
morals, by sentiment and imagination. The very reverse Avas the 
fact. Of the dignity and importance of that cause, every sound 
understanding which reflects upon it is convinced ; but there is a 
degree of intense conviction, knoAvai only to a few priA-ileged 
minds, whose conclusions, instead of being the result of cold and 



HIS EARNESTNESS. 483 

waiy deduction, flasli upon them at once with all the light and 
warmth of instincts ; and the consequence of this rapid perception 
is, that they either neglect or will not submit to a formal demon- 
stration of Avhat they have themselves thus intuitively acquired, 
or that assuming the truth to be equally evident to all, they think 
not so much of proving as of enforcing it by imposing illustration, 
and by addressing their hearers' imagination and passions, in 
order to kindle in them the courage or the shame, without which, 
in defiance of their conviction, the truth may be sacrificed to their 
fears or interests. This was constantly Mr. Curran's great object, 
and it was in effecting it that so much of his extraordinary power 
lay. Few speakers ever possessed such despotic controul over the 
honest passions of their audience, for few ever so unhesitatingly 
surrendered themselves to the inspiration of their own. He had 
the true popular temperament; there was no cold philosophic 
tranquillity about him, but all was life and action. His thoughts, 
style, and manner, " had certain vital signs." He was all his life 
contendina: for a cause, and he did it with no " half-faced fellow^- 
ship ;" he loved it " not wisely but too well," and not the less 
because it wanted friends. His cause was his religion, to which 
he adhered, under what he considered its persecution, with all the 
confiding, " desperate fidelity " of a martyr ; and though his zeal 
might to many appear mistaken, still it was zeal, real, disinterested 
and fervent, aftecting from its sincerity even where its tendency 
was least approved, and not unfrequently communicating its flame 
by surprise to those who were most active in extinguishing it. 
At the period of those displays to which these observations more 
particularly refer, the times were "too deeply commoved" for 
affectation ; his audiences saw and knew that he had none ; his 
very irregularities proved it. He was not for ever reminding them 
that he was an orator; he had, not the art, but what was above 
art, the feeling and manliness to forget it himself. He did not 
consider that he was only acting a part of which the world might 
hereafter say, that it was well or ill supported; but that a great 



484 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

constitutional trust had devolved upon him, of which, heedless of 
the world's sentence upon his skill or conduct, he would I'igidly 
perform all the solemn obligations. When miduig-ht after mid- 
night* he rose, " with darkness and with dangers compassed 
round," not so much with the expectation of averting his clients' 
doom, as to show that all the decent rites of defence should be 
observed, or to give utterance to his own anguish at his country's 
fate, he took little thought of the future critic's comments. When 
" his soul was sick even unto fainting," he was not studying how 
" the stream of agony might flow decorously down his brow ; how 
he should writhe with grace and groan in melody." Upon all 
those terrible occasions, he felt himself to be much more tlian the 
advocate of the mere individuals under trial; he had much to say 
that was not contained in his instructions. However, as a subject 
and a man, he might have condemned their projects or have 
bewailed their delusion, he still considered it his paramount duty, 
as the advocate of the thousands who were yet hesitating ere they 
plunged, and whom a gleam of mercy might recall and save — as 
the advocate of himself, of society, and of the last remnant of 
the constitution, the pri\dlege of complaint — to discountenance 
the rage of public accusation, and to protest in his own person 
against the continuance of those fatal counsels, to which he refer- 
red so much of the disasters that he witnessed and predicted. 

It is impossible to read a page of his speeches without observing 
how much the power depends upon this impassioned feeling ; and 
how strikingly expressive of such a high temperature are the images 
that he employed. Numberless examples might be given, as the 
descriptions of the trial and execution of Orr — of the horrors of 
those distracted times — of the Irish informer — of " the perjured 
O'Brien,! a wretch who would dip the evangelists in blood " — of 
Eeynolds, " who measured his importance by the cofiins of his vic- 

* Several of his speeches on the state trials were delivered at that hour.— C. 
+ " I have heard of assassination by sword, by pistol, and by dagger; but here is 
a wretch who would dip the evangelists in blood."— C, 



HIS FORENSIC EFFORTS. 485 

tims, and appreciated liis fame in the field of evidence, as tlie Indian 
warrior did in fight, by the number of scalps with which he could 
swell his triumphs." Many of his images, when stript of the im- 
posing phraseology, are remarkable for their simplicity and famil- 
iarity, and for that reason came more home to tlie bosoms of their 
hearers, as where he . exclaims — " Is it possible you can bring 
yourselves to say to your country, when the measures of govern- 
ment are pregnant with danger, that at such a season the press 
ought to slumber upon its post, or sound nothing but adulation and 
praise, acting like the perfidious watchman on his round, who sees 
the robber wrenching the bolts, or the flames bursting from the win- 
dows, while the inhabitant is wrapt in sleep, and cries out that ' the 
morning is fair and all is well V " Or where, describing the extinc- 
tion of the press, he thus concludes — " It is then that freedom is at 
its last grasp — it is then the honest man dares not speak, because 
truth is too dreadful to be told — it is then the proud man scorns to 
speak, but, Hke a sturdy physician, bafiled by the wayward excesses 
of a dying patient, retires indignantly fi'om the bed of an unhappy 
wretch, whose ear is too fastidious to bear the sound of wholesome 
advice — whose palate is too debauched to bear the salutary bitter 
that might redeem him, and therefore leaves him to the felonious 
piety of the slaves that talked to him of life, and strip him before 
he's cold." 

To this extreme sensibility Mr. Curran could, for the most part, 
give expression in grave, energetic, and elevated language. Where 
the subjects before his mind were those of pity or eulogium, or of 
general description, passages wdthout number may be cited, in 
which the most fastidious cannot complain that the dignity is 
unsustained. But when he was called upon, as he so often found 
himself, to speak in terms of reprobation ; when some great public 
w^rongs, of which he had as quick a sense as of a personal outrage, 
awakened his indignation, in the midst of more regular declama- 
tion, there were frequent intrusions of ludicrous association, which, 
at first view, may seem to form an unappropriate contrast w^th the 



486 LIFE OF CUIJKAN. 

prevailing solemnity of tlie occasion. In the generality of such 
instances, however, it will appear, upon a little consideration, that 
the levity is in the language and not in the ruling sentiment. Ordi- 
nary disapprobation may be conveyed in terms of ordinary and 
serious reproach ; but in ardent natures, whose habit it is to over- 
feel upon every subject, whether of praise or censure, the sense of 
wrong, that in a common mind would stop at comparatively mode- 
rate indignation, becomes inflamed by their fancy into feelings of 
intense execration quite beyond the reach of formal invective to 
express. Such persons are seldom satisfied with gravely reproving 
what they condemn ; it is not enough " to tell it how they hate 
it ;" they know that the expression of their hatred alone will not 
detract from the dignity of its object; that it is often but the im- 
potent railing of an inferior. AVhether it be a public or a private 
delinquent that they denounce, they feel that they would be allow- 
ing him to escape almost with impunity, if they did not degrade him 
from his social or personal rank down to the level of his offence. 
To hatred they therefore add bitter ridicule ; for ridicule, though 
not the test of truth, is the test of scorn and contempt. Humour 
for such a purpose (and it was for this that Mr. Curran most fre- 
quently employed it) is not levity ; it has nothing of the sportings 
of a heart at ease, but its source is in the profoundest passion, and 
in that indignant haughtiness peculiar to the extreme of passion, 
which in its most violent paroxysm will assume a proud vindictive 
playfulness of exterior, lest the detested object should glory in the 
discovery of all the agitation that he excites, or lest it might be 
taken as a tribute to his importance to deem him worthy of a frown. 
It was in this impassioned, exaggerating spirit, upon which the 
particular talent of an advocate so much depends, that Mr. Curran 
approached every person or measure that he had occasion to 
arraign ; whether the subject of his sarcasm happened to be a rival 
candidate, " whose voters might be seen coming in Hke the beasts 
of the field, in droves, from their pastures, presenting a picture of 
human nature in a state of degradation such as never had been 



HIS CONVERSATION. 487 

witnessed since Nebuchadnezzar was at grass ;" or an Irish secre- 
tary, " regarding whom he would not imitate the ancient tyrant's 
practice of tormving insects ;" or an English ministry, " a motley 
group, without virtue, or character, or talents — the sort of cabinet 
that we have laughed at on the stage, where ' the potent, grave, 
and reverend senioi-s' were composed of scene-shifters and candle- 
snuffers, robed in old curtains and wigged from the stores of the 
theatre ;" or even though he should have to call the public atten- 
tion to " the princely virtues and the imperial qualifications, the 
consummate wisdom and sagacity of our steadfast friend and ally, 
the Emperor of all the Russias — a constellation of all virtue, com- 
pared with whose radiance the Ursa Major but twinkles as the 
glow-worm." 

Over this, the most popular, and when skilfully managed, one 
of the most effective modes of attack, Mr. Curran's fancy gave him 
the entire command ; and if he ever employed it to excess, or out 
of place, he but shared in the common failing of indolence and 
focility, that of preferring as best what is found the most easy and 
most successful. And here, in speaking of his facility in creating 
resemblances, whether of a humorous or a more elevated order, it 
is worthy of remark, that the history of his mind, in this respect, 
strongly favours the opinion that the powers of the imagination 
are as capable of improvement from cultivation as any other of 
the mental faculties. In Mr. Curran these powers were strikino-ly 
progressive ; in his earlier attempts there is little of the usual 
exuberance of a juvenile imagination ; they are, on the contrary, 
compared with his subsequent compositions, cold and prosaic, and, 
when considered as specimens of fancy, unworthy of the mind that 
produced them. The same remark applies to his conversation. 
It was by his conversation that he first attracted notice ; but, how- 
ever delightful in other respects, it was for a long time unillumi- 
iiated by those gleams of poetic conception, which in his maturer 
years were incessantly bursting forth. The fact was (and in this his 
mind was peculiar) that his imagination developed itself with such 



488 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

extreme slowness, that it was not till he had been for some years 
a candidate for public distinction that he became aware of the 
particular powers that were to secure his success. . The conscious- 
ness of them came gradually, and was, as it were, forced upon him 
by the unlooked for effect of accidental and unpremeditated 
efforts : but becoming at length assured of the secret of his 
strength, his confidence, ambition, and industry were excited, and 
he then, almost for the first time, began formally and assiduously 
to encourage, botli in public and private, those habits of imagina- 
tive creation, wdiich were subsequently to form the prominent 
character of his mind. The consequence of thus keeping his 
imagination in perpetual exercise was most conspicuous, and as a 
mere metaphysical fact is not incurious or unimportant. So great 
was the facility and the fertility which it produced, that, in his 
later years, scarcely an idea presented itself which did not come 
accompanied by some illustrative image. It was by the image 
that he generally preferred to express the idea, and accordingly 
his ordinary conversation, where he indulged in this propensity 
Avith the least reserve, presented such a series of original and 
apparently unlaboured illustrations, that he might almost be said 
to have habitually thought in metaphors. 

Mr. Curran's speeches are generally referred to as instances of 
what is now denominated the Irish school of eloquence, the distin- 
guishing quality of which is said to be the predominance of pas- 
sion and imao-ination over solid aro-ument. The correctness of 
this definition is questionable. It is true that the eminent persons 
who have employed this style perpetually express their thoughts 
in impassioned and figurative language, but there is no incompati- 
bility between such a mode of expression and the profoundest 
reasoning. When a person addresses a public body, he does not 
proceed, like a mathematician, rigidly to demonstrate through 
each link of the chain the validity of every conclusion. A speaker 
who should attempt to make such a parade of logical exactness 
would soon discover that his audience would never submit to so 



IRISH SCHOOL OF ELOQUENCE. 489 

liarassing a tax upon tlieir attention. The popular orator is 
necessarily obliged to throw out his conclusions, in separate 
unconnected masses. To try their value, we are not to asjc if 
they are deducible from what has immediately preceded. They 
often are not so : they are often the results of previous meditation 
which he has stored in his memory, and takes occasion to advance 
as they happen to be suggested by the topics under discussion ; 
although, strictly speaking, there may be no logical connexion 
between them. Their value is, therefore, to be ascertained, not by 
examining them as deductions from his previous matter, but by 
inquiring into the correctness of that original process of reasoning 
by which alone his mind could have acquired them ; and if what 
the orator puts forward in the form of assertions appear, upon 
investigation, to be capable of demonstration, it is manifest that 
his matter is not less argumentative because he conveys it in a 
figurative diction. The profoundest moral and political truths 
may be conveyed as well in figurative as in literal language. The 
strength of a thought depends as little as that of a man upon 
dress. We may disapprove of the taste which needlessly decks it 
out in gaudy attire ; but we are not, for that reason, to question 
its native force, and still less when it com.es appropriately adorned 
with the richest clothing of a poetic imagination. 

But whatever may be the merits of this style, it does not 
appear to have been for any length of time peculiar to the Irish 
people.^' It was unknovrn in Ireland before the present reign. 
We do not find it to any extent in the productions of Swift, Gold- 
smith, or Sterne, the three most popular writers of that country. 
There is infinitely more of passion,. and of the higher order of 
fancy, which is termed imagination, in the prose works of some 



* This observation is to be understood to apply to the literary productions of the 
educated classes. The idiom of the native Irish language is highly figurative, and has a 
sensible influence upon the minds of the lower orders; but it would be difficult to show 
that this influence has ever extended much beyond them.— C. 

21* 



490 LIFE OF CUKKAN. 

of tlie eminent Englisli writers of the seventeenth century.* This 
figurative style -was introduced into the Irish House of Commons 
about the period of Ireland's great struggle for her independence. 
An opinion prevails that Burke was its original founder ; but 
though Burke might have employed it in the British senate a few 
years before that period, it is a violent assumption to suppose that 
the eminent leaders in the Irish Parliament should have unani- 
mously dismissed their previous ideas of oratorical composition, 
in order to become his imitators. There is also the strongest 
internal evidence against the supposition. An imitator does not 
copy merely the leading qualities of his model ; he unconsciously 
conforms to it in every particular — in the structure of his periods, 
favourite forms of expressions, and other minute observances, which 
perpetually betray his secret. Let the speeches of Burke be com- 
pared with those of Mr. Grattan, the most eloquent of the Irish 
senators, and not a trace of such imitation can be detected : no 
two styles (as far as regards the diction and verbal construction) 
can be more different. Burke's language is rhetorical and copious, 
even to profuseness. He leaves nothing to be supplied by his 
hearers. He addresses them as persons previously unacquainted 
with the subject, and becomes so explanatory, that he seems deter- 
mined not to leave off till he forces them to understand it. Mr. 
Grattan is the reverse — abrupt, condensed, and epigrammatic, 
rejecting the connecting particles of speech, and often the con- 
necting ideas, as expletives and incumbrances. He throws off his 
matter in the form of a table of the contents of his mind. 

If any single individual could be said to have laid the foundation 
of this style, it might equally be traced to the great Lord Chatham, 
many of whose impassioned bursts belong to that order of eloquence 
which was so general in the Irish House of Commons : but its pre- 
valence in that assembly can be more naturally and satisfactorily 

* Of this, numerous examples might be produced from the prose works of Milton, the 
writings of Jeremy Taylor, Lord Bacon, &c. — C. 



POPULAR ELOQUENCE. 491 

explained by the condition of the times, and the nature of the sub- 
jects which agitated the nation. In the various stages of political 
society, there is none so favourable to popular eloquence as that in 
which the advantages of freedom are fully appreciated by the 
intellectual classes, but are in danger of being lost, or are unjustly 
withheld. This may be either at that period of national decline, 
when, from the corruption of morals, and its unerring signs, the 
venality of every rank, and a general contempt for established 
institutions, liberty is imperfectly secured against foreign invasion, 
or the licentious ambition of powerful subjects. Such was the case 
when eloquence most flourished in Greece and Rome. Or it may 
be when a people is just emerging from bondage — in that anxious 
interval between the first signs of returning life in the national 
body and its perfect reanimation, when violent and repeated shocks 
are necessary to rekindle its spirit, and preserve it from relapsing 
into torpor. This was the condition of Ireland. At such a period 
the advocates of popular rights could not confine themselves within 
the limits of temperate discussion. The flagrant abuses — the shame- 
less stand made against their reformation — the notorious venality 
and worthlessness of those who made it — the natural pride and 
generous impatience of men, who found their honest efforts counter- 
acted by a race of beings whom they despised, necessarily impel- 
led them to give utterance to their indignation in all the vehemence 
of the most passionate remonstrance. These circumstances of 
themselves — the deep sense of their country's wrongs, and of the 
necessity of animating it, and exposing its oppressors — will suffi- 
ciently explain the peculiarities of their oratory. Figurative lan- 
guage is the natural idiomatic style of invective and complaint; the 
sufferer (or the advocate who represents him) finds a melancholy 
consolation in painting his misery in the most vivid colours that an 
exasperated imagination can supply. There is a feeling of high- 
minded self-love in the victim, whose spirit is not utterly enslaved, 
which leads him to exaggerate, if possible, the injustice under 
which he groans, and proudly to justify himself against his destiny. 



492 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

The Enoflish House of Commons affords a corroboration of these 
remarks. Whenever the same im|)assioned style of eloquence has 
been heard there, it has almost invariably proceeded, not from the 
ministei'ial members defending the wisdom and expediency of their 
acts, but from the leaders of the Opposition inveighing against 
measures which they held to be dishonourable or oppressive. 

In addition to the general influence which Burke is supposed to 
have had upon the oratory of his countrymen, it has been often 
observed, that a strong individual resemblance may be discovered 
between him and Mr. Curran. It is very doubtful praise to say of 
any one that he differed from Burke : still, if the two men be atten- 
tively compared, it must be admitted, that in many leading 
points, the}^ were strikingly dissimilar. Thus (without attempting 
an elaborate analysis of their respective qualities), to advert to the 
most obvious differences. Both possessed the faculties of rea- 
son and imagination in a high degree ; but the general maxims to 
wdiich those powers conducted them were strongly contrasted. In 
all his general views of society, Burke's mind discovers a deep 
respect for power, for " rank, and office, and title, and all the 
solemn plausibilities of the world." He reviewed the history of 
the world, and, pausing over the institutions which had affected its 
destiny, reverenced them for the greatness of their effects. Mr. 
Curran looked at institutions as connected with freedom ; and, 
where he found a tendency in them to enslave the human mind, 
forgot all their imposing grandeur in that single evil. Thus Burke's 
imagination contemplated, " with an awful gravity," the age of 
chivalry (the time of our " canonized forefathers," as a splendid 
array of pageantry, gallantry, and deeds of arms, with its proud 
" bearings and ensigns armorial," and ■ all those images of power 
which " carry an imposing and majestic aspect." The other 
remembered its oppressions, and was never heard to lament that 
" the age of chivalry w^as gone. The same leaning to power may 
be observed in Burke's pathetical effusions. His most affecting 
lamentations are over fallen greatness. Mr. Curran's pathos was 



bprke's eloquence. 493 

less ambitious, but more social and extensive, embracing the suf- 
ferings of every rank. The pathos of the one was more that of the 
schools : the sublime epic pathos of antiquity. He was most touched 
by historical viscissitudes. He hung over the royal corse and 
wept from the recollection that the head, now prostrate in the 
dust, had lately worn a crown. The other's tears were not reser- 
ved for the misfortunes of the great — he did not disdain to shift 
the scene of distress from the palace to the cottage or the dun- 
geon, and to sympathise with those obscure afflictions which his- 
tory does not condescend to record, but which man is destined 
hourly to endure. 

Burke's acquired knowledge was more extensive, and his mind 
more scientific and discursive. He looked upon the great scene of 
human aftairs as a problem for a philosopher to resolve, and de- 
lighted in those wide comprehensive views where much interme- 
diate balancing and combination must precede the final result. No 
one could better describe the spirit of a particular age, or the con- 
dition and resources of a powerful empire. Mr. Curran's genius 
was less philosophic, but more popular. He had more confined 
his studies to the human passions and feelings as he observed them 
in active operation before him. His general views were derived 
from his own experience rather than from historical instruction. 
He had witnessed so much of the abuses of power, that he acquir- 
ed a hatred of and contempt for it ; and his chief skill lay in ex- 
posing those abuses. He could best describe a scene of local or 
individual oppression, and lay bare, for public execration, " the in- 
fernal workino's of the hearts of the malio-nant slaves " who were 
its instruments. 

Many particulars in which they differed may be attributed to 
their respective situations. They were cotemporaries ; but they 
lived in such different countries, that they might be said to have 
lived in a different age. Burke's life was passed under a political 
system, which (whatever might be its theoretic imperfections) was 
difi*using real blessings all around ; and to leave it as he found it 



49J: LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

"was the wise end of all his efforts. The other lived under a sys- 
tem, which, with " many shows of seeming- pure,"' was an actual 
curse ; and his life was a long struggle to inspire his country with 
the spirit to i-eform it. These different objects of each — of the one 
to preserve freedom, of the other to obtain it — gave a different 
character to their oratory. Burke's wisdom had taught him the 
dangers of popular innovation ; and he would have protected, even 
under the shield of superstition, the institutions over which he 
watched. There is a certain oracular pride and pomp in his man- 
ner of announcing important political truths, as if they were awful 
mysteries which the uninitiated crowd were to reverence from afar. 
Like the high priests of old, he would have inspired a sacred dread 
of approaching the inmost temple, lest some profane intruder 
should discover and proclaim that the god was not there. The 
spectacle of misrule in Ireland had, on the contrary, impressed upon 
Mr. Curran's mind the necessity of animating the people w^ith a 
spirit of fearless inquiry. To do this he had to awaken them to a 
sense of their importance and their claims, by gratifying their self- 
love, and filling them with the persuasion, that there w'as no truth 
wdiich they were not fitted to examine and comprehend. 

Burke is more instructive and commanding than persuasive. He 
looked upon the people from an eminence, from which he saw 
them under their diminished forms, and betrayed a consciousness 
that he was above them. The other remained below — threw him- 
self among them — and, persuading them that they were his equals, 
by that means became the master of their movements. 

This is the most striking distinction in the impressions which 
they make upon us — that we feel the one to be our superior, 
and imagine the other to be only a companion. In Burke's most 
exalting conceptions there is a gorgeous display of knowledge and 
intellect, which reminds us of our inferiority and our incapacity to 
ascend without his aid. The popular charm of the other's elo- 
quence is, that it makes us only feel more intensely what we have 
felt before. In his loftiest flights, we are conscious of being eleva- 



BUKKE AND CURRAN COMPARED. 495 

ted v/itli liim, and for the moment forget that we soar upon 
another's wing ; for the elements of his sublimity are the passions 
in which we all partake ; and, when he wakes the living chords 
to their highest ecstasy, it is not that he strikes one which was 
never touched before, but that he gives a longer and louder vibra- 
tion to the chords which are never still. 

The history of each exemplifies their characters. Burke was a 
philosopher, and could transplant his sympathies. He went 
abroad, and passed his life admiring and enjoying the benefits of 
" his adopted, and dearer, and more comprehensive country." Mr. 
Curran was a patriot, whose affections, could he have torn them 
from their native bed, would have drooped in another soil. He 
stayed at home, and closed his days in deploring the calamities 
which he had vainly labored to avert. 



496 LIFE OF OURRAN. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Mr. Curran's skill in cross-examination— His general reading— His conversation— His 
■wit— Manuscript thoughts on various subjects — His manners, person — Personal pecu- 
liarities—Conclusion. 

Next to tlie force of Mr. Curran's eloquence was the skill of his 
cross-examinations, a department of his profession in which he 
was, perhaps, still more unrivalled than as a speaker. Of the extent 
of this talent it is impossible that any description or examples can 
convey an adequate idea to those who have never witnessed the 
living scene ; but the bar, who alone could fully appreciate his 
resources, for they alone v^^ere fully sensible of the difficulties in 
each case against which he had to contend, have unanimously 
allowed that his address and sagacity as a cross-examiner were 
altogether matchless. It vras, perhaps, here that as an advocate 
he vras most feared and most resistless.^' In cases where there 

* In the cross-examination of witnesses, Mr, Curran's scrutiny was tremendous. 
Instinctive and intuitive as Shakespeare, he knew all the fastnesses, passes and windings 
of the human heart, into which truth seeks to retire and to conceal itself. He knew all 
the weaknesses, the passions of hope and of fear, of interest and of resentment ; and 
such was his knowledge of human nature, and so much was he in her confidence, that 
he silently inhaled all the operations of the villain he would expose ; dragged Cacus from 
his cave, penetrated into the mysteries of hell, and threw open to the common observer 
the secrets of those dark regions. Keen and ardent in the pursuit, he was always sure 
of his game ; eager and intrepid in the chase, he was ever in at the death ; whether play- 
ful or severe, he never relaxed ; whether his weapon was ridicule, or open and direct 
attack ; whether it was the power of reason cutting through a weak and fluttering consci- 
ence, his edge was unerring: the mole which hid its head in the earth, he perceived by 
the kicking of its feet ; when it could see nothing, it thought itself secure and Unseen. 
If truth lay at the bottom of her well, he plunged in, and plucked up drowned honour by 
the locks ; or did she escape to the mountain top, he would round its slopes and gain its 
heights with the activity of an Arab warrior. He had the power to elicit it from the 
flint; and by his touch, as if with a wand, he caused it to gush forth from the hardest 
rock. It may justly be said of him, that " The Gordian knot of it he could untie familiar 



CKOSS-EXAMINATION. 497 

was some latent fraud or perjury, in exposing which his whole 
strength was always most conspicuously developed, he uniformly 
surprised his own profession no less than the general spectator, by 
the singular versatility of his powers, and by his familiarity with 
every variety of human character, at once so extensive and so 
minute, that he could discover at a glance the exact tone and 
manner best calculated to persuade, terrify or entrap into a con- 
fession of the truth, the particular description of person upon 
whom he had to work. In managing a sullen or dishonest wit- 
ness there was nothing that he left untried ; solemnity, menace, 
ridicule, pathos, flattery, and even for the moment respectful sub- 
mission. In contests of this kind he had, in an eminent degree, 
the art of "stooping to conquer." If a fevvMnsidious compliments 
to the witness's understanding, and an apparently cordial assent 
to all his assertions and opinions, or a long series of jests, no mat- 
ter whether good or bad, seemed likely to throw him olf his guard, 
he never hesitated ;^ his favourite method was by some such artifice 
to divert his attention, or to press him with pretended earnestness 
upon some trivial irrelevant point until he found the witness elated 
with his fancied security, and then to drop, as it were incidentally, 

as his garter." Jurors latterly began to doubt themselves, and to be frighted at the 
magic of his address ; while he who bore false witness against his neighbours was often 
seen, like Festus, to have trembled. In variety and effect in this department of his pro- 
fession he was unrivalled, and sola sicca secuni spatintut^ ardua. — O'Regan. 

* The following may be taken as a specimen of the ludicrous phraseology to which he 
sometimes resorted : — A witness having sworn that as he was returning, at a late hour, 
from a supper party, he was assaulted by Mr. Curran's client, the counsel, in his cross- 
examination, asked him — " if the number of eggs that composed his supper was not more 
than that of the graces and equal to that of the muses? — if he did not usually drink a 
little coarse wine at dinner, by way of foundation to keep the claret out of the wet? if 
he did not swallow a squib after dinner, by way of Latin for his goose ? and if, after his 
foundation of white wine, with a superstructure of three pints of claret, a stratum of 
nine eggs, a pint of porter, and a supra-cargo of three pints of Geneva punch, his judg- 
ment was not a little under the yoke?" — C. [In the case Massy v. the Marquis of Ifead- 
ford, Mr. Curran had described the "noble" defendant, as a hoary adulterer. In the 
cross-examination of one of the witnesses, he found it difficult to prove his age. At last 
the witness admitted, that the Marquis was gray. "You will admit," said Curran, quot- 
ing a well known adage, " that Tie was gray before he was good." — M.] 



498 - LIFE OF CUItKAN. 

and with a tone of indifference as to tlie answer, or in a manner 
implying that it liad been already admitted, some vital question, 
to which, in all probability, the desired reply would be given 
before the perjurer liad time to recollect whether he had pre- 
viously asserted or denied the fact. So unexpected and surprising 
were his discoveries of a person's character and morals, from 
external indications so slight as to be imperceptible to others, 
that the lower orders of his countrymen had an almost supersti- 
tious reverence for his abilities, as if he were gifted with a super- 
natural power of " looking through the deeds of men." From 
the prevalence of this opinion, his name was the proverbial terror 
of the Irish informer. Even those wretches who, in " drudging for 
a pardon," or a reward, had so steeled their conscience against 
remorse and shame, that they could hear unmoved the deep buzz 
of smothered execrations with which the multitude announced 
their approach, and even glory in their indifference to the " sound 
of public scorn," had not the nerves to sustain his torturing 
development of their unrighteous lives. They were not only 
abashed and confounded by that art, which he so consummately 
possessed, of involving them in prevarication, by confronting them 
with themselves, but they have been actually seen, as if under a 
momentary shock of virtuous panic, to plunge from off the public 
table, and fly to shelter from his upbraiding presence, leaving the 
rescued victims to reward by their blessings theii' advocate and 
saviour. 

It will not be necessary to dwell at any length upon Mr. Cur- 
ran's character as a lawyer. He was never profoundly read ; but 
his mind had firmly seized all the leading principles of the Eng- 
lish code, more particularly those of .consticutional law; and he 
"was always considered by the members of his own profession to 
have displaye<I eminent skill in his logical application of them. 
In the earlier part of his carreer his reasoning powers were admit- 
ted to have been of the first order, until the splendour of his 
eloquence gave rise to the unfounded notion, that where there 



HIS ACQUIREMENTS. 499 

was so much imagination the faculty of reason must have been 
deficient. But some of his published arguments amply refute tliis 
opinion. 

His judicial history contains little requiring particular notice. 
Upon the bench he religiously respected those privileges which 
at the bar he had so strenuously supported. If he fell into any 
error upon this point, it was that his abhorrence of favouritism 
often led him to be over scrupulous in granting any indulgence, 
where the counsel claiming it happened to be one of his personal 
friends. 

With regard to his general reading, much of it may be col- 
lected from his speeches. The frequency of classical and scriptural 
allusions, and of expressions borrowed from the English poets, suf- 
ficiently point out the writings with which he was most familiar. 
He was never deeply versed in general history ; he had, however, 
studied with attention and success that portion of it (the great 
constitutional epochs in the history of Great Britain and Ireland) 
Avhich it was peculiarly incumbent on him, as a lawyer and a 
senator, to know. The enthusiasm with which, in a passage 
already cited, he has described tlie scientific and literary genius 
of Scotland, proves the impression made upon him b}' the noble 
productions of that intellectual people. His early knowledge of 
the French language has been mentioned. He continued to cul- 
tivate it during the rest of his life ; and though his study of it was 
only occasional and desultory, and his residence in France never 
exceeded a few weeks at a time, he spoko and wrote it with unusual 
correctness. It may be added, as a peculiarity of his taste, that 
he used to express himself to be more sensible of the beauties of 
that language than of his own. Among the French serious writers 
he always preferred Rousseau. He understood ItaUan sufiiciently 
well to comprehend the popular poetry of modei'n Italy; but 
Italian literature was never one of his favourite pursuits. 

After having stated so much in commendation of Mr. Curran's 
intellectual superiority ; it mav seem like the spirit of boundless 



O" 



600 LIFE OF CURRAN. 

eulogium to go on ; but who, that ever knew him, could dismiss 
his life without dwelling for a moment upon his colloquial and 
convivial powers ? As a companion, he was, in his own country, 
confessedlv without a rival. In speaking of the charms of his 
conversation, it would be exceeding the truth to assert, as has 
sometimes been done, that the creations of his careless hours were 
often more vi\dd and felicitous than his more studied public 
eftbrts ; yet is it no small praise to be justified in saying, that they 
were equal, or nearly equal ; that few who approached him, 
attracted by his general reputation, ever left him without havin 
their admiration confirmed, if not increased, by the -sagour and 
originality of his ordinary conversation.* According to the testi- 
mony of those who had enjoyed his society at an earlier period, 
some of its attractions had latterly disappeared. The survivors of 
the " Monks of St. Patrick," are those who best can tell what Mr. 
Curran was at the festive board. It was in that season of youth 
and hope, when exalted by the spirit of their classic and patriotic 
meetings, and surrounded by " those admired and respected, and 
beloved companions," that his mind surrendered itself to every 
emotion of social enthusiasm, throwing off in exhaustless profusion 
every thought that could touch the fancy or the heart. No 
laboured description can now convey an adequate notion of those 



* It was in conversation when he was properly in his own climate ; when in high tone, 
and harmonised by fit accompaniments, that he " discoursed most excellent music." 
Often happiest when his subject was gravest, or when letters, men, taste, past, or passing 
events were touched. On these topics he entered with a curious felicity, so as to swell 
the listener's mind to participate in the proud consciousness of human superiority, of 
which he could be scarcely apprised till he heard him. And whether he courted the 
mournful muse, or were his even the sallies of gaiety and mirth, such was the sombre of 
his pencil, or such the playfulness and airhiess of -his imagery ; and so surprising were 
the rapid transitions to the most exquisite comedy, that days and nights passed thus 
with him were truly in his own phrase (on some other occasion) " the refections of the 
gods." His quotations, though frequent, were never pedantic : he melted down the clas- 
sic sentiment, and it became more pure, and you felt the allusion or illustration in all 
the freshness of its original force. It was on these occasions his soul resembled a fincly- 
toned.instrument, which a rude or clumsy touch flung into disorder: it was the harp 
which played to the zephyr, and whose wildest were its sweetest notes !"-"0'Rkgan. 



BIS WIT. 501 

eftusions. The graver parts, bad they been preserved, would have 
been found to reseuible many admired passages in bis printed 
speeches ; but the lighter and most frequent sallies, deriving their 
charm from minute and evanescent combinations of characters 
and circumstances, have necessarily perished with the occasions 
for which alone they were intended. 

Numerous specimens of his wit have been preserved, from which 
its style, rather than its extent, may be collected. It may be gen- 
erally observed of his wit, that it delighted, not so much from the 
naked merit of any single efibrt, as from the incessancy and un- 
expectedness of its combinations. It also possessed one quality, 
which is above all value, that of never inflicting an undeserved 
wound. In all those cases where the words might seem to intend 
a personal reflection, he never failed to neutralise the poison by a 
playful ironical manner which testified his own belief of what he 
was asserting. It Avould be difficult to produce an equal number 
of pointed sayings, in which the spirits consist so little in particu- 
lar of general satire ;, neither do they appear, like the humorous 
sallies of many celebrated wits, to have been dictated by any pecu- 
liar set of speculative opinions. The sceptic, the misanthrope, the 
voluptuary, and all, in short, who habitually look at the business 
of life through the medium of their particular doctrines, are per- 
petually betraying in their mirth some open or lurking application 
to their favorite tenets : the instances of their wit, if accurately 
examined, may be resolved into illustrations of their system. Thus 
the humour of Voltaire is for ever reminding us of his impiety ; 
that of Swift, of his splenetic contempt of human folly ; but almost 
all of Mr. Curran's lively sayings were suggested at the moment 
by the immediate circumstances and persons, or verbal associations; 
they are in general insulated and individual, ending where they 
began, and not referrible to any previous systematic view of human 
aftairs.* 

*An entire collection of the bons mots attributed to Mr. Curran would fill many pages. 
The following are selected as a few specimens. In all of them it will be seen how much 



502 LIFE OF CUKRAN. 

Mr. Home Tooke, after having passed an evening in the com- 
pany of Mr. Curran and the late Mr. Sheridan, whom he had, 
upon that occasion, for the first time met together, was asked his 
opinion of the wit of each. He rephed, " that Sheridan's w^as like 
steel highly polished, and sharpened for display and use; that 



less the essence depends upon the satire than upon the fanciful combination of words or 
images. 

Mr. Curran was engaged in a legal argument— behind him stood his colleague, a gen- 
tleman whose person was remarkably tall and slender, and who had originally designed 
to take orders. The judge observing that the case under discussion involved a ques- 
tion of ecclesiastical law—" Then," said Mr. Curran, " I can refer your lordship to a 
high authority behind me, who was once intended for the churali, though {in a whisjyer to 
a friend beside him) in my opinion he was fitter for the steeple." 

An officer of one of the courts, named Halfpenny, having frequently interrupted Mr. 
Curran, the judge peremptorily ordered him to be silent, and sit down. "I thank your 
lordship," said the counsel, " for having at length nailed that rap to the counter^ 

" I can't tell you, Curran," observed an Irish nobleman, who had voted for the Union, 
"how frightful our old House of Commons appears to me." " Ah ! my lord," replied the 
other, " it is only natural for murderers to be afraid of ghosts." 

A deceased judge had a defect in one of his limbs, from which, when he walked, one foot 
described almost a circle round the other. Mr. Curran being asked how his lordship still 
contrived to walk so fast, answered—" Don't you see that one leg goes before like a tip- 
staff, and clears the way for the other ?" 

Mr. Curran, cross-examining a horse-jockey's servant, asked his master's age. "I 
never put my hand in his mouth to try," answered the witness. The laugh was against 
ihe counsel, till he retorted—" You did perfectly right, friend, for your master is said to 
be a great bite." 

A miniature painter, upon his cross-examination by Mr, Curran, was made to confess 
that he had carried his improper freedoms with a particular lady so far as to attempt to 
put his arm round her waist. " Then, sir," said the counsel, " I suppose you took that 
waist (waste) for a common." 

"No man," said a wealthy, but a weak-headed barrister, " should be admitted to the 
bar who has not an independent landed property." " May I ask, sir," said Mr. Curran, 
" how many acres make a xcise-acre .?" 

" Would you not have known this boy to be my son, from his resemblance to me ?" asked 
a gentleman. Mr. Curran answered— " Yes, sir ; the maker's name is stamped upon the 
blade." 

Mr. Curran was asked what an Irish gentleman, just arrived in England, could mean by 
perpetually putting out his tongue? Answered— " I suppose he's trying to catch the 
English accent." 

At a public dinner he was defending his countrymen against the imputation of being a 
naturally vicious race. " Many of our faults, for instance (said he), arise from our too 
free use of the circulating medium {pointing to the wiiie) but I never heai-d of aq Irish- 
man being horn dmnh," 



LOOSE THOUGHTS. 503 

Ciirran's was a mine of virgin gold, incessantly crumbling awa}^ 
from its own richness." 

The celebrated Madame De Staei, who during her last resi- 
dence in England, was surrounded by persons the most distin- 
guished for talent, frequently observed that she had been most 
struck by the originality and variety of Mr. Curran's colloquial 
powers. This was in 1813, when his health and spirits were in a 
state of depression, which rendered the effort to support his part 
in such company a painful exertion.^'' 

Among his papers there are a few sheets covered with thoughts 
loosely thrown together, from which a few extracts may convey 
some idea of the more striking passages of his conversation. 

" England has been industriously taught to believe, that Avliat- 
ever degrades or tortures this devoted country is essentially good 
for her ; and that if some supernatural spirit (a Popish imp to be 
sure) were to take advantage of some dark night, and in the morn- 
ing the Irish peasant should awake in astonishment to find his 
cottage with its roof thatched, and its floor dried, and clothes and 
food miraculously supplied for his children, I can scarcely doubt 
that when certain intelligence of so disaffecting a visitor had 
arrived in Britain, a solemn ftist and humiliation would be pro- 
claimed by our orthodox rulers to expiate whatever of our crimes 
had drawn down so heavy a punishment, and to atone for the 
offence, for example, of abolishing the slave trade, and to show 
our contrition by giving it a five years' reprieve, that so it might 
recover itself and live for ever, to the satisfaction of a merciful 
God, and the true glory of his holy religion." 

" [Bourbons : freedom of the press.) — Perhaps exile is the 



* Allndiiia: in a private letter to one of those parties, he says, " I dined yesterday with 
a society of wits at IMadame de Stael's ; Sheridan, other great names, &c. I find that 
even sugar may cloy. Perhaps there is no society in which less bona-fide cordiality 
reigns. In truth where can you look to find so much false money as among coiners by 
trade? Believe me I have passed much pleasanter evenings at Whitehall. (A country- 
place In the vicinity of Dublin.)— C. 



604 LIFE OF CUKliAN. 

bitterest ingredient of captivity. The Jew felt it so, when he 
wept by the waters of Babylon. If adversity ever becomes a 
teacher, surely her school ought to be found in exile." 

'^ [Christianity.) — The first ages were hypocrisy and imposture. 
These soon excited their natural enemy, free thinking. Religion 
could have been no party in the conflict. She was neither a 
sophist nor a poet ; she had little dealing with rhetoric or meta- 
physics; but at last, when Hypocrisy and Atheism have made 
peace, she may come round again." 

" [Lord .) — These small folks are as much afraid of the 

press, as Robinson Crusoe's man Friday was of the musquet, when 
he ' prayed massa gun don't go off and kill poor wild man.' " 

" [Hoio holds Ireland^ — The upper orders gone and the remains 
following. The people agriculturists." 

^' [Agriculture.) — The mother and nurse of a military popula- 
tion. Ireland has been forced to this. It was thought that she 
was sunk under the arbitrary tyranny of British monopoly. Let 
the proud Briton regale himself in the wholesome air of mines and 
workshops, and become ossified in the strengthening attitudes of 
monotonous labour, while the degraded Irishman drav>'S health 
and number, and fierceness, and force, and becomes too nimble to 
be caught by his crippled owner, who hobbles after him and 
threatens him with his crutch." 

" [Irish administration) — I should much sooner presume to 
speak out against the solid substance of an English ministry, than 
venture on a whisper against their shadows in Ireland. 

" I know the seeming moderation of these men, but I fear it is 
like the moderation of the drunkard who glories in the sobriety of 
the morning ; who mistakes exhaustion for contrition, and is vain 
of reformation that stole upon him while he slept. 

" To inflame the public mind on a point of theology, was to 
divert them from the great point of national oppression on which 
the country could not but be unanimous, and to turn it to one on 
which England would be against us. 



HIS MAJNNERS. 505 

" I do n't hesitate to say, that a good government would in a 
week have Ireland tranquil. 

" Putting out the law will never do ; but here the insurrection 
act was clearly a topic in argument, not a measure of necessity. 

" In all countries revolutions have been produced by the 
abuses of power. If you would mark the process of force look 
to '98. 

"The tyrant may say to the slave, you are bound in conscience 
to submit — the slave may put the question to his conscience, and 
receive a very different answer. 

" Obedience is founded on allegiance and protection ; but if an 
idea is held out that a nation, containing at least two-thirds of the 
military population of the empire, is to remain upon their knees 
in hope of the interval when cruelty and folly may work them- 
selves to rest, and humanity and justice awaken — I say, forbid 
it the living God ! that victim man should not make his elec- 
tions between danger and degradation, and make a struggle 
for that freedom, without which the worship of his name has no 
value." 



Mr. Curran's manners were remarkably simple and unassuming. 
In his youth, before his value was sufficiently ascertained to procure 
him uniform respect, he occasionally exhibited before his superiors 
in rank some signs of that pride with which men of genius are dis- 
posed to assert their dignity; he never indulged however in this feel- 
ing to an offensive degree. The early and long continued habit of 
his mind, was to underrate his own talents and importance. It was 
only where he imagined that some slight was intended, that he 
showed a consciousness of his claims ; but the occasions of excit- 
ing his vanity or indignation on this point entirely ceasing as his 
character became known, the feeling itself was soon extinguished. 

In his daily intercourse, he scrupulously avoided an ordinary 
failing of superior men, that of impressing upon less gifted persons 

22 



506 LIFE OF CUREAN. 

a sense of tlieir inferiority. In this department of the business of 
life, he eminently possessed (to use a favourite expression of his 
own) that nice tact^ which taught him to accommodate his style 
and sentiments to the various characters and capacities of those 
Avith Vvhom he conversed. However humble their rank or pre- 
tensions, he listened with good humour to all they had to oifer, 
and was never betrayed into a ridicule of those little demonstra- 
tions of vanity and self-love, which they who mix in the world 
have to encounter every moment. 

In his political relations, he was not vindictive. The prominent 
and decided part which he took in public affairs necessarily invol- 
ved him in many enmities, which the condition of the times, and 
the nature of the question at issue, inflamed into the highest state 
of exasperation ; but as soon as the first fever of passion and indig- 
nation had subsided, he evinced a more forgiving disposition than 
he found among his opponents.^' In his later years, he spoke 
of the injuries which he had sustained from Lord Clare and many 
others, with a degree of moderation which could scarcely have 
been expected from a person of his quick and ardent tempera- 
ment.f 

* He was in principle a Whig. His passions, his habits, his friendsliips, and his educa- 
tion, made hina so. He did not obsequiously follow any individual model ; nor did he 
on all occasions pursue the measures of his party. He had an abstract idea of what love 
of country should inspire; to this he sometimes referred his actions. If there was any 
one person among those with whom he acted, to whom he would submit his judgment in 
cases of doubt or of difficulty, so higlily did he venerate Mr. Fox, that his authority 
would alone be very likely to have decided him. — O'Regan. 

t A few years before his death, Mr. Curran strolled one day into the Poet's Corner in 
Westminster Abbey. As he contemplated the monuments, he became deeply affected by 
the spectacle of mortality on every side, and for the moment dismissing every harsher 
feeling, gave up his mind to the solemn reflections which the scene was calculated to in- 
spire. " The holy influence of the spot (to adopt the words of an illustrious countryman 
of his in relating this circumstance) had so subdued him, that he began to weep." While 
he was in this softened mood, he observed at a little distance his old antagonist. Doctor 
Duigenan. Mr. Curran, considering that they were both to be soon beyond the possibility 
of further contention, and that no place could be more suited for the exchange of mutual 
forgiveness, approached, and affectionately offered him his hand. "I shall never take 
Mr. Cm-ran'B hand," replied the doctor, and abruptly turned away. — 0. 



HIS PERSONAL APPEAEANCE. 50T 

Mr. Curran's person was short, slender, and ungraceful, resem- 
bling rather the form of a youth not yet fully developed, than the 
compact stature of a man.* His face was as devoid of beauty as 
his frame. His complexion was of that deep muddy tinge by 
which Dean Swift's is said to have been distinguished. He had a 
dark, glistening, intellectual eye, high arched, and thickly covered 
brows, strong, uncurled, jet-black hair, which lay flat upon his 
forehead and temples. When his thoughts were unoccupied (which 
was rare) his features were not particularly expressive ; but the 
moment he became animated, there was a rush of mind into his 
countenance which dilated every fibre, and impressed upon it a 
character of peculiar energy and genius. 

[Mr. Phillips thus glances at his appearance in 1805 ; 

" Mark well that slight short figure with restless gait, and swaying 
motion, and speaking gesture — he with the uplifted face, protruded 
under lip, and eyes like living diamonds. See how the young 
men cluster round him. Observe the spell-bound gaze — hark to 
the ringing laughter. That is Curran — the unique, the wondrous, 
the inimitable Curran — who spake as poets in their inspiration 
wrote, and squandered wit with Rabelais profusion. Curran, whose 
words, merry or mournful as his country's music, commanded tears 
or laughterf at his bidding. Curran, in evil days, erect amid the 

* O'Regan says " Mr. Curran was in person rather under the middle stature ; his frame 
wiry, yet muscular; and, though the countenance was not prepossessing, yet it was 
redeemed by the eye, which was full of fire and energy; and might be likened to that of 
Coriolanus, ichich could have pierced a corslet. He often said it would- cost him half an 
hour more to get at the heart of his hearer, than it would a handsome man. He was 
always pleasant on the subject of defect of beauty ; and, when in Parliament, turned it 
very happily against another member. One of the messengers brought in an unsealed 
note from the door of the House, hastily written, and not addressed to any person. Mr. 
Curran looked at the back of the paper, and observed that it was not for him and asked 
why he had handed it to him? The messenger answered, by saying, the gentleman who 
had given it to him was at the door ; that he pointed at Mr. Curran, and desired him to 
give it to the ugliest gentleman in the House : he directly pointed to the other side, and 
desired him to give it Mr. , for it was for him it was intended." 

t I never met a person who possessed this wonderful faculty before. Lord Brougham 
one day, in my presence, asked the late Dr. Birkbeck, who knew Curran, whether my 



508 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

groveling, pure amid the tainted ; in public life, tlie most consis- 
tent of patriots ; in private, tlie most social, exquisite, enchanting 
of companions."] 

His voice was not naturally powerful or musical ; but he mana- 
ged it so skilfully, that he gave full expression to every feeling 
and passion which it had to convey. Its unrivalled excellency lay 
in communicating solemn and pathetic sentiments. In private and 
serious conversation, it was remarkable for a certain plaintive sin- 
cerity of tone, which incessantly reminded those wdio knew him 
of the melancholy that predominated in his constitution. His de- 
livery, both in public and private, w^as slow, and his articulation 
uncommonly distinct. He was scrupulous in his choice of words, 
and often paused to search for the most expressive. His powers 
of language and delivery were the result of assiduous industry and 
observation. There was nothing, however minute, connected with 
the subject, which he deemed beneath his attention.'" 

It is perhaps time to close this account ; yet as many might 
feel disa|)pointed at the omission of those minuter traits which 
render the individual still more peculiar and distinct, and bring 
him into a kind of personal acquaintance with . those who never 
saw him, some passing notice shall be taken of the more striking 

estimate of hira was not exaggerated, " All I can say," was the answer, " is, that for the 
five weelcjs he and I lodged together in Paris during the peace of Amiens, there were not 
five consecutive minutes within which he could not make me hoth laugh and cry /" Tea 
years later, Lord Byron sa.ys of him, "I have met Curran at Holland House. He beats 
every body. His imagination is beyond human, and his humor (it is difficult to define 
what is wit) perfect. He has fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics. 1 
never met 7iis equal.'''' Again : " Curran ! Curran's the man who struck me most. Such 
imagination ! There never was any thing like it. He was wonderful even to me who had 
seen many remarkable men of the time. The riches of his Irish imagination were 
exhaustless. I have heard that man sjjeak more poetry than 1 have ever seen written, 
though I saw him seldom, and but occasionally.^^ 

* He sometimes mispronounced the word " tribunal," throwing the accent upon the first 
syllable. When reminded of the error, he alleged in his excuse, that, having once heard 
the word so pronounced by Lord Moira, whom he considered a model of classical pro- 
nunciation, he adopted his method ; and, though subsequently aware of the incorrect- 
ness, unconsciously repeated it.— C. 



HIS ORDINARY HABITS. 609 

features of tliis suboixlinate class, wliicli separated Mr. Curran from 
other men. 

One of lus great peculiarities was, tliat, in the most trivial things, 
he was peculiar. He did not sit in his chair like other persons : he 
w^as perpetually changing his position, throwing himself into atti- 
tudes of thinking, and betraying, by the most incessant play of shift- 
ing expressions on his countenance, that there was something with- 
in which was impatient of repose. It was the same when he 
walked or rode. Long before his features could be discerned, his 
friends recognized him from afar by the back of his -hand firmly 
compressed upon the hip, his head raised towards the sky, and 
momentarily turning round, as if searching for objects of obser- 
vation ; or, if he was in conversation, by the earnest waving of his 
body, and the fervour of his gesticulation. These were the exter- 
nal signs of that latent impulse which was the source of his genius. 
One of the most extraordinary circumstances in his constitution 
was the length of time to which this impulse could continue to 
act with undiminished force. He used to assure his intimates, that, 
long after the body's exhaustion had incapacitated him for farther 
exertion, ho felt a consciousness that the vigour of his mind was 
unimpaired. Even his capacity of dispensing with bodily rest, con- 
sidering the apparent delicacy of his frame, was surprising. Dur- 
ing the more active period of his life, he frequently sacrificed a 
night's rest with impunity. After passing the day in his pro- 
fessional occupations, and one half of the night in the House of 
Commons, and the other in the convivial meetings of the leaders 
of his party, he re-appeared on the succeeding morning in the 
courts, as fresh for the ensuing labours of the day as if he had 
spent the interval in renovating sleep. There were, in his more 
ordinary habits, many similar indications that his frame was, as it 
were, overcharged with life. In his conversation his fancy gene- 
rally became more brilliant as the night advanced. He retired to 
bed with reluctance ; and his friends often remarked, that he was 
seldom so eloquent and fascinating as after he had risen from his 



610 LIFE OF CUERAN. 

chair, momentarily about to depart, but still lingering and delight- 
ing them — " indulgens animo, pes tardus erat." In his own house, 
after his guests had retired to their chambers, he seized any excuse 
for following one of them, and renew^ing the conversation for 
another hour ; and the person thus intruded upon seldom con- 
sidered himself the least fortunate of the party. It appears from 
all this, that Mr. Curran was not much addicted to sleep. One 
reason why his frame required so little may have been that his sleep 
was generally most profound, and uninterrupted by dreams. The 
latter circumstance he often regretted, for he was inclined to think 
that the throng of fantastic ideas which present themselves in 
dreams might, if carefully attended to, have supplied him with 
new sources of poetic imagery. 

In his diet he ^vas constitutionally temperate : he ate little, 
and was extremely inditlerent regarding the quality of his fare. 
For the greater part of his life he vras subject to a debility of the 
stomach, which, though it could scarcely be called a disease, was 
yet so permanent as to be the source of the utmost inconvenience. 
Whenever dinner was delayed beyond the expected time,* the 
irritation of his stomach became so intolerable, that he was 
frequently obliged to retire altogether from the company. From 
his attachment to the pleasures of convivial society, he was sup- 
posed to have been addicted to wine ; but the fact w^as that a very 
small quantity excited him ; and, whenever he drank to any 
excess (as was sometimes the case in large companies) it was 
rather mechanically and from inattention than from choice. 
When left to his natural propensities, he was almost as temperate 
in this respect as in his food. At his own table he was hospitable 
and unceremonious. In every transaction of common life, he dis- 



* He insisted, at home and abroad, on dining at five o'clock. On the contrary, Toler 
(Lord Norbury) liked to dine late. One day, Mr. Toler was going to take his ride, and 
meeting Mr. Curran walking towards his house to dine, passingly said, "Do not forget, 
Curran, you dine with me to-day ;" " I rather fear, my friend," replied Mr. Curran, " it 
is you who may forget it."— M. 



TRAITS OF CHARACTEE. 511 

liked and despised the affectation of state. His maxim was, that 
the festive board should be a little republic, where the host, hav- 
ing previously provided whatever was necessary for the general 
interest, should appear with no greater privileges or responsibili- 
ties than a guest. 

From the same distaste to show, he was always remarkable for 
the plainness, and even negligence, of his external dress ; but he 
paid the most scrupulous attention to personal cleanliness. His 
regular custom was to plunge every morning when he rose into 
cold water. It may be generally added, that in all his ordinary 
habits, in his house, his equipage, his style of living, of travelling, 
&c. — the same republican simplicity prevailed. During the two 
or three last years of his life, he might often be seen, on the road 
between London and Cheltenham, seated outside one of the public 
coaches, and engaged in familiar conversation with the other 
passengers. 

His constitutional tendency to melancholy has been already 
noticed ; yet, in the familiar intercourse of daily life, the promi- 
nent characteristic of his mind was its incessant playfulness — a 
quality which rendered his society peculiarly acceptable among 
females and young persons. He took great delight in conversing 
with little children, whom he generally contrived to lead into the 
most exquisitely comical dialogues. He was fond of giving 
ludicrous appellations to the places and persons around him. His 
friend Mr. Hudson the dentist's house was built in "the Tus- 
can order" — a celebrated snuff-manufacturer's country-seat was 
" Sneeze-town " — the libraries at watering-places were " slopshops 
of literature." He called a commander of yeomanry (who dealt 
largely in flour) " Marshal Sacks " — a lawyer, of a corpulent frame, 
"Grotius" — another, who had a habit of swellino* out his cheeks, 
" Puffendorf." He often humorously remonstrated with a friend, 
who was of a very tall stature, and with whom, as one of his 
" very longest acquaintances," he used that freedom, " upon his 
want of decorum in going about and peeping down the chimnies. 



612 LIFE OF CURKAN. 

to see what his neighbours were to have for dinner." This list 
might be extended to a greater length than would be necessary 
or suitable. 

In speaking of Mr. Curran's literary habits, it should have 
been mentioned that he was, for the greater part of his life, an 
ardent reader of novels."^ In his earlier years, it was his regular 
custom to have one under his pillow, Avith which he commenced 
and closed the reading of the day. His sensibility to the interest 
of such works was so excessive, as to be scarcely credible by those 
who never saw him sobbing, almost to suffocation, over the 
pathetic details of Richardson,f or in more extravagant parox- 
ysms of laughter at the ludicrous descriptions of Cervantes. There 
was a kind of infantile earnestness in his preference of anything ot 
this sort which struck his fancy ; for days it would usurp his 
tlioughts and conversation. When the translation of the Sorrows 
of Werter first appeared, he was for ever repeating and praising 
some favourite passages,^ and calling upon every friend that 
chanced to visit him to join in the eulogy, with all the impatience 
of a child to display a new toy to his companions. 

Such were his excellencies, or his harmless peculiarities, and the 
office of enumerating them has been easy and attractive. But 
biography, if the fidelity to truth which it demands be too rigidly 
exacted, may become a harsh task, converting a friend, or one 
nearer than a friend, unto the ungracious character of an accuser. 
Every lover of genius would wish that this account of Mr. Curran's 
life might here have closed without rendering it liable to the charge 
of having suppressed any circumstance which it would not have 



* So was O'Connell, all his life.— M. 

t Particularly the will of Clarissa Harlowe, which he considered a masterpiece of 
pathos — C. 

:|: Among them was the following, from one of Werter's letters — "When in the fine 
evenings of the summer you walk towards the mountains, think of me ; recollect the time 
you have so often seen me come up from the valley ; raise your eyes to the churchyard 
that contains my grave, and, by the light of the departing sun, see how the evening 
breeze waves the high grass which grows over mo." — C. 



HIS CHARACTEK. 613 

been to the interest of his name to have disclosed. But the ques- 
tion will be asked, has this been a faithful picture ? — Have no shades 
been designedly omitted? — Has delicacy or flattery concealed no 
defects, without which the resemblance cannot be true ? To such 
inquiries it is answered, that the estimable qualities, which have 
formed the preceding description, have not been invented or exag- 
gerated ; and if the person, who has assumed the duty of collect- 
ing them, has abstained from a rigorous detail of any infirmities 
of temper or conduct, it is because a feeling more sacred and 
more justifiable than delicacy or flattery has taught him, and 
should teach others, to regard them with tenderness and regret. 
In thus abstaining from a cruel and unprofitable analysis of fail- 
ings, to which the most gifted are often the most prone, no 
deception is intended. It is due to that public to whom Mr. 
Curran's merits have been here submitted as deserving their 
approbation, to admit with candour that some particulars have 
been withheld vvdiich they would not have approved ; but it is also 
due to his memory to declare, that in balancing the conflicting 
elements of his character, what was virtuous and amiable will be 
found to have largely preponderated. He was not perfect; but 
his imperfections have a peculiar claim upon our forbearance, when 
we reflect that they sprung from the same source as his genius, and 
may be considered as almost the inevitable condition upon which 
that order of genius can be held. Their source was in his imagi- 
nation. The same ardour and sensibility which rendered him so 
eloquent an advocate of others, impelled him to take too impas- 
sioned and irritating views of questions that personally related to 
himself. The mistakes of conduct into which this impetuosity of 
temperament betrayed him cannot be defended by this or by any 
other explanation of their origin, yet it is much to be able to say 
that they were almost exclusively confined to a single relation, and 
that those who in consequence suffered most, but who, from their 
intimate connexion with him, knew him best, saw so many redeem- 

22* 



514 LIFE OF CUSEAN. 

ing qualities in his nature, that tliey uniformly considered any 
exclusion, from his regard not so much in the light of an injustice, 
as of a personal misfortune. 

There was a time when such considerations would have failed to 
appease his numerous accusers, who, under the vulgar pretext of 
moral indignation, were relentlessly taking vengeance on his public 
virtues by assiduous and exaggerated statements of private errors, 
which, had he been one of the enemies of his country, they would 
have been the first to screen or justify. But it is hoped, that he 
was not deceiving himself when he anticipated that the term of 
their hostility would expire as soon as he should be removed be- 
yond its reach. " The charity of the survivors (to use his own 
expressions) looks at the failings of the dead through an inverted 
glass ; and slander calls off the pack from a chase in which, when 
there can be no pain, there can be no sport ; nor will memory weigh 
their merits with a niggard steadiness of hand." But even should 
this have been a delusive expectation — should the grave which now 
covers him prove an unrespected barrier against the assaults of 
political hatred, there will not be wanting many of more generous 
minds, who loved and admired him, to rally round his memory from 
the grateful conviction that his titles to his country's esteem stand 
in defiance of every imperfection, of which his most implacable 
revilers can accuse him. As long as Ireland retains any sensibility 
to public worth, it will not be forgotten, that (whatever wayward- 
ness he may have shown tow^ards some, and those a very few) she 
had, in every vicissitude, the unpurchased and most unmeasured 
benefit of his affections and his virtues. This is his claim and his 
protection ; that having by his talents raised himself from an hum- 
ble condition to a station of high trust and innumerable temptations, 
he held himself erect in servile times, and has left an example of 
political honour, upon which the most scrutinizing malice cannot 
detect a stain. Nor will it be deemed an inconsiderable merit to 
have thus, without fortune or connexions, forced his way into a 



HIS EMINENCE. 515 

situation of such responsibility. " He that seeketh to bo eminent 
amongst able men (said the ablest of men) hath a great task." '^^ 
This task Mr. Curran fulfilled. In the generous struggle for 
distinction, he was surrounded, not by a race of puny compe- 
titors, whom accident or wealth had lifted above their sphere, but 
by men of surpassing vigour, in whose ranks none but athletic 
minds could be enrolled. Flood, Yelverton, Daly, Burgh, Perry, 
Forbes, Ponsonby, and, to crown the list, their leader and solitary 
survivor, Henry Grattan,f — these, all of them great names, and 
worthy of their country's lasting pride, were the objects of his 
honourable emulation, and to have been rewarded by their appro- 
bation, and admitted an associate of their labours, is in itself an 
evidence of his value, which neither- praises can increase, nor 
envy take away. 



* Bacon's Essays. 

t Henry Grattan died (soon after the above was written) on June 4, 1820. He waa 
interred in Westminster Abbey, next to Fox.— M. 



APPENDIX. 



ANECDOTES OF CURRAN AND HIS FRIENDS. 

"When Mr. Curran was iu Trinity College, Dublin, he was summoned by 
the Board of Senior Fellows (the moral and literary censors of the 
University) and stood before them in all that may be conceived lachrymose 
in feature, penitent in exterior, yet internally unmoved. After a long 
lecture, delivered in Hebrew, and explained into Greek, the accusation 
amounted in plain English to this, that he " kept idle women in hia 
chambers," and concluded according to the form of the statute and good 
morals. He saw he had no way to escape but by the exercise of his wit, 
and solemnly assured them that the accusation was utterly unfounded, as 
he never in his life kept any woman idle in his rooms. 

Bills of indictment had been sent up to a Grand Jury, in the finding of 
which Mr. Curran was interested. After delay and much hesitation, one 
of the Grand Jurors came into court to explain to the Judge the grounds 
and reasons why it was ignored. Mr. Curran, very much vexed by the 
stupidity of this person, said, •' You, Sir, can have no objection to write 
upon the back of the bill, ignoramus, for self and fellow jurors 5 it will 
then be a true bill." 

When the habeas corpus suspension act passed, some time before the 
year 1798, some person arguing for the propriety and necessity of that 
law, had thrown out doctrines and opinions unfavourable to the freedom 
of the constitution ; he, whose countenance and doctrines were by no 
means agreeable to his hearers, was opposed by one of them, who said, 
" Were you incarcerated for six months under this law you so much extol, 
I should be glad to see how you would /oo/c." On which Mr. Curran 
observed, " Perhaps he would not look a bit the worsen 



618 APPENDIX. 

A member of the last Irish parliament, who had held one of the highest 
law offices under the crown, all on a sudden came over to that party who 
opposed the Union, voted against that measure, and lost his office, not 
without much regret. Some person speaking of his conduct on this 
occasion, extolled it highly, and observed, that he had made great sacri- 
fices for his country's good, and had proved himself a sincere patriot. 
"Sincere! no," said Mr. Curran, "he is a sorry patriot.'' 

A learned serjeant, whose promotion to the bench was daily expected, 
happened to be rather tedious in the statement of a case on trial before 
one of the chief judges, who, anxious for compression, observed to the 
Serjeant, that when he came to administer justice, he would then know the 
value of time. A gentleman well known for his humour, and not having 
much esteem for the judge, in relating the matter, gave quite another 
turn to it by omitting the word administer ; " When you come to justice 
you will the7i know the value of time." 

Whenever any barrister is promoted, it is a rule on circuit that he shall 
send to the bar mess, at least a dozen of claret, to drink his health. A 
gentleman, not very much distinguished for ability, was recently appointed 
to one of the county chairs, and his claret was announced in these words : 

" This is Mr. 's health, and may he live long to administer justice, 

as I am sure he will, indifferently .'" 

£. barrister whom Mr. Curran very much esteemed for many amiable 
qualities, among others, for a fine temper and good nature, dining with 
him, was asked to be helped to green gooseberries and cream ; he said he 
liked them very much, but feared, if he ate of them, he might be called, 
as Dr. Goldsmith was, a gooseberry fool. Mr. Curran said, " Take the 
gooseberries, my friend, and the milk of human kindness which so abun- 
dantly flows round your heart, will soon make a fool of them." 

During Lord Westmoreland's administration, when a number of new 
corps were raised in Ireland (and given as jobs and political favours,) it 
was observed that when inspected there, the establishment of each regi- 
ment was nominally reported to be complete at embarkation for England, 
but when landed at the other side, many of them had not a quarter of 
their numbers. " No wonder," said j\Ir. Cnrran, " for after being mus- 
tered, they are afraid of being peppered, and oflf they fly, not wishing to 
pay for the roast ." 



ANECDOTES OF CUERAN. 519 

Mr. Joseph Atkinson and Mr. Curran went on a visit to Scotland, where 
they passed a day with the family of Lord Boyle : Lady Charlotte Boyle, 
the sister of Lord Hopetown, asked Mr. Curran what he thought of Edin- 
burgh ? "I think. Madam," said he, " speaking of the Ancient and New 
Town, it is like an old gentleman married to a blooming young bride ; he 
venerably loves and protects her, whilst she graces his side by her beauty 
and elegant attractions." 

A person observing how many new houses were erecting in Dublin, said, 
" What will they all end in ?" Mr. Curran replied, " they must end in 
siiioke^ 

On Mr. Curran's visit into Scotland, he heard that the priest of the 
temple of Hymen at Gretna Green no longer forged the chains of wed- 
lock ; that he was not now a blacksmith, but a tobacconist. Mr. Curran 
said, ^'So much the better, for he will make the happy couple give quid for 
quo." 

Mr. Egan the lawyer, when chairman of Kilmainham, had entertained 
expectations that he would be thence promoted to a seat on the bench ; he 
was perceived by Mr. Curran to have paid great attention to some beauti- 
ful woman ; and his principles not being exactly of the Jose]}h character, 
he was jocosely charged by Mr. Curran as to the motives. Egan, fearing 
that his immorality might become an impediment to his advancement, 
Lord Manners being at the head of the law department, said, "I am 
free to confess I am not restrained by morals, but by Manners. ''I '^ You 
should rather have said,'* observed Mr. Curran, "that your bad manners 
are restrained by his good morals." 

Of some attorney, whose character for litigation fame dealt severely 
with, Mr. Curran observed, that every one's hand was raised against him, 
and his against every one. And he thought him like a rat which had 
got under the chairs, where every one made a blow at him, but no one 
could bit him. 

Some time after the Union, Mr. Curran was walking by the Parliament 
House with a certain member, a friend of his, who had supported that 
measure ; this gentleman observed that he never passed that house 
without the deepest melancholy and regret. "I do not wonder at it," 
said Mr. Curran, " I never knew a man who had committed murder, who 
was not haunted by the ghost of the murdered whenever he came to 
fhe spot at which the foul deed was done." 



520 APPENDIX. 

la Ireland they have a good-natured, familiar, open manner of friendly 
intercourse, which enters frequently into the most serious and solemn 
affairs. A gentleman of the age of thirty, about four feet high, and quite 
a boy in appearance, for want of accommodation in a very crowded court, 
in the county of Kerry, got into the jury-box. He was very much beloved, 
and being too low to peep over the box, perched himself on the brawny 
shoulders of one of the jurors. In the progress of the trial it was observed, 
that there were thirteen persons in the box. This created some confusion, 
and it was objected, that it would be a ground to set aside the verdict. 
Mr. Curran said that, considering the difficulty of the question, the jurors 
were right in putting as many heads together as they could ; but be that 
as it may, the verdict would not be endangered, for it would be secured 
by the maxim of the law, which says, '^ de minimis non curat lexP 

Of some learned serjeant, who had given a confused, elaborate, and 
tedious explanation of some point of law, he observed, that whenever that 
grave counsellor endeavoured to unfold a principle of law he put him in 
mind of a fool whom he once saw struggling for a whole day to open an 
oyster with a rolling pin. 

He said of a busy, bustling, garrulous lawyer, that he always thought 
him like a counsellor in a play, where all was stage-trick, bustle, or scene- 
shifting. 

In cross-examining an old clergyman whose evasions of truth were dis- 
graceful to him, Mr. Curran closed with this question, "Doctor, when yoa 
last put your spectacles in the Bible, give me leave to ask you, did you 
close it on that passage which says ' Thou shalt not bear false witness 
against thy neighbour V " 

He told an anecdote of an Irish tenant in Kerry, who came to pay his 
rent of £500, and the lady of the house perceiving he had a propensity to 
play, she being very ugly, of a musty, dingy countenance, with a bad 
squint, and who never looked straightly at any object but a pack of cards, 
or the money set on the game, she prevailed on him, however, to play, 
till he had lost all his money, and she still continued to encourage him, 
relying on his honour now that his money was lost. At length, fixing his 
eyes fiercely on her, he excused himself, declaring in a decided tone, that 
he would play no more with her ladyship, for that she had the devils' 
look [luck] and her own. 



ANECDOTES OF CURKAN. 521 

Such was the effect of Mr. Curran's pleasantry, that even on ordinary 
occasions, servants in attending on the table often became suspended, like 
the bucket in the well, and frequently started as if from a reverie, when 
called upon for the ordinary attendance. Sometimes a wine glass could not 
be had, or if asked for, a knife or fork was presented in its place ; their faces 
turned away, you heard nothing but the breaks of a suppressed laugh- 
ter. He had a favourite black servant who lived with him for many years, 
and to whom, for his great fidelity, Mr. Curran was very much attached. 
This poor fellov/ was observed for a few days before his departure, to have 
been oppressed with gloom and sadness, the cause of which was not directly 
enquired into. One morning, whilst in this state, he came up anxiously to 
his master, and with apparent regret and an air of much dejection requested 
to be discharged. Mr. Curran told him he was very much concerned to 
lose the services of so faithful a person, that he had a strong regard for 
him ; and on enquiring into the reason of his desire to leave him, the black 
replied, '• it is impossible for me to remain longer with you, massa." 
" Why, my good fellow, we will see all care taken of you." ^' No massa, 
I cannot live longer with you, I am losing my health with you, you make 
me laugh too much." 

A brother barrister of his, remarkable for having a perpetuity in dirty 
shirts, was drily asked in the presence of Mr. Curran, " Pray, my dear Bob, 
how do you get so many dirty shirts ?•' Mr. Curran replied for him, ** I 
can easily account for it ; his laundress lives at Holyhead, and there are 
nine packets always due." This gentleman wishing to travel to Cork 
during the rebellion, but apprehensive he should be known by the rebels, 
was advised to proceed incog., which he said was easily effected, for by dis- 
guising himself in a clean shirt, no one would know him. 

Of the same gentleman, who was a sordid miser, it was told Mr. Curran 
that he had set out from Cork to Dublin, with one shirt, and one guinea. 
" Yes," said Mr. Curran, " and I will answer for it, he will change neither 
of them till he returns." 

Going to dine in the country with the late Judge Fletcher, he had arriv- 
ed early enough to take a walk in the garden 5 Mr. Fletcher's country 
seat is separated from a public road by a stone wall, which having fallen 
in during a severe winter, the gardens were thereby left open to the dust 
of the road : it was now the month of April, and Mr. Fletcher was observ- 
ing on the rows of brocoli, which be said were very backward, and 



522 APPENDLX. 

scarcely to be seen, though they had been carefully drilled. On which 
Mr. Curran observed, "It is very true, but consider, they have been much 
exposed to the dust, and look as if they had been after a long march.- ^ 
This sally it is said to have cost the judge more than he calculated upon, 
as he immediately raised the wall six feet higher. 

Lord Avonmore supported the measure of the Union, it is supposed, as 
the result of his judgement : Mr. Curran opposed it. It was said, in gra- 
titude for this, the lord obtained from the crown an office of considerable 
emolument.* When the draught of the patent was sent to him for his 
approbation, he called into his study a few of his friends, among the rest, 
Mr. Curran, to see if all was right. The wording ran in the usual form ; 
" To all to whom these letters patent shall come, greeting, &.c &c. we of 
the united kingdom of Great Britain and /re/a/zc?, king, &c. &c. ;" Mr. 
Curran, when the reader came to this part, exclaimed, " Stop Stop F' 
" My God !" said Lord Avonmore impatiently, " why stop ?"' " Why ? be- 
cause," said Mr. Curran, " it sets out the considerafioyi too early in the 
deed.-' 

Mr; Curran made occasional visits into France, where he met with many 
of those most celebrated for genius and letters; among others he became 
acquainted with the Abbe Sicard, and returned him thanks in the name 
of human nature for the good he had done to mankind. He was also 
well known to Madame De Stael, and his account of her accords with 
what has long before been known to the public. He conversed with her, 
and though her face was by no means prepossessing, he describes her as 
having the power of talking herself into a beauty. 

A barrister entered one of the Four Courts, Dublin, with his wig so 
much awry as to cause a general titter. Seeing Curran smile, he said, " Do 
you see any thing ridiculous in my wig ?'' '* No,'' replied Curran, 
" nothing but the head." 



* At the Union, Lord Avonmore (who voted for It), was elevated in the peerage from ttie 
rank of Baron to that of Viscount, and received a patent (probably tlie document above 
named) appointing him Principal Registrar of the Irish Court of Chancer3'-, with a salary 
of 4199^. and succession to his son, by whom it is received to this hour. By this Lord 
Avonmore was Chief Baron of the Excliequer and a clerk in the Chancellor's Court. It 
is cmious to find his lordship so invariably praised, by Irish writers, for his patriotism. 
As plain Barry Yelverton, briefless (and nearly shirtless) he was a " patriot," for many 
years, — as a judge, peer, and unionist what was he ? — M. 



ANECDOTES OF CUKRAN". 523 

A lawyer, a friend of Mr. Curran, who bad devoted mucli more of 
his time to the study of Hoyle than of Hale, a notable gambler, but a 
person of eccentric and lively turn of mind, got entangled with Mr. Cur- 
ran one day after dinner, and losing a little ground on the score of temper, 
sharply observed, that he had too much spirit to allow any person to go 
too far with him, and passionately added, •' No man shall trifle with me 
with impunity;" to which Mr. Currau replied, '• Play with you, Roderick, 
you mean." 

Mr. Curran one day riding by the country seat of one of the judges, 
was struck by a group of lovely children whom he perceived playing in 
the avenue ; he stopped to inquire to whom all these fine children belonged ; 
he was answered by the nurse, who had a beautiful infant in her arms, 

that they were the children of Judge . " Pray, my good woman, 

how many of them has he?" "There are twelve playing about inside, 
and this in my arms is the thirteenth." " Then," said Mr. Curran, "the 
judge has a full jury, and may proceed to trial whenever he chooses, and 
the young one will make an excellent criei-." 

Mr. Egan, the lawyer, was a person of very large stature and of great 
thews and sinews : on going into a bath, he exultingly struck his breast, 
all over matted with hair, and exclaimed, " Curran, did you ever see so 
fine a chest V *' Trunk, you mean," said Mr. Curran. 

Egan, in addressing a jury, having exhausted every ordinary epithet 
of abuse, he stopped for a word, and then added, '' this naufrageous 
ruffian." When afterwards asked by his friends the meaning of the word, 
he confessed he did not know, but said " he thought it sounded well.' 

Mr. Curran happening to cross-examine one of those persons known in 
Ireland by the insignificant description of half gentlemen, found it neces- 
sary to ask a question as to his knowledge of the Irish tongue, which 
though perfectly familiar to him, the witness affected not to understand, 
whilst he, at the same time, spoke extremely bad English : " I see, sir, 
how it is, you are more ashamed of knowing your own language, than of 
cot knowing any other." 

A lady having shewed him her fan, with the map of England upon it, 
he said, '• Madam, it should be the map of the world, for it puts all uur 
hearts in a flutter like yourself." 



524 APPENDIX. 

A gentleman who was too desirous of attracting the attention of those 
about him to the style and fashion of his dress, and one time, to the shape 
of a pair of half boots, which he had that day drawn on, appealed to Mr. 
Curran, among others, for his opinion, who said, " He observed but one 
fault, — they shewed too much of the calfJ^ 

A gentleman, whose father had been a wealthy and respectable shoe- 
-maker of the city of Dublin, and who had indulged many persons with 
credit, had lately died, and left, with other property, his account books to 
his son, who was a person of great vivacity and good humour ; an old 
debtor of the father, in bandying wit with the son, annoyed him with the 
piquancy of his raillery, the son observed, that he was paying oif in 
an odd coin, demanded payment of the debt, and said, if it was further 
delayed, he would sue him : the other asked in what capacity would he 
sue 1 " As sole executor ^^ said Mr. Ciirran. 

Mr. Curran made frequent excursions to England, " to distract,''' as he 
said, and there he enjoyed the society of many friends. Lords Moira, 
Carleton, and a long catalogue of persons eminent for rank and talents. 
Burke and Sheridan, though known to him, he appears never to have set 
so high a value upon as other men did. Of Burke, he used to say, that 
*•' his mind was like an over-decorated chapel, filled with gauds and shews, 
and badly assorted ornaments.'' Of Dr. Johnson, that "he was a super- 
stitious and brutish bigot, and that, with the exception of his Dictionary, 
he had done more injury to the English language than even Gibbon 
himself." 

Of John Home Tooke he thought in the words of Mr. Grattan, that 
no man was to be found of more acuteness, or of more undaunted resolu- 
tion. '' Methinks,'- said Mr. Grattan, " if Mr. John Home Tooke purposed 
to drink his glass of wine, and that the bolts of heaven had rent asunder the 
earth beneath his feet, Mr. J. H. Tooke would still drink his glass of wine." 
Mr. Tooke, in once asking a countryman of Mr. Curran's, what opinion 
the Irish entertained of his wit compared with that of Mr. Sheridan ; on 
being answered, that his own countrymea conceived no other man living 
possessed it in equal brilliancy, richness, and variety, the philosopher of 
England observed, " I know both these gentlemen, and I know them well, 
both in public and in private ; Sheridan is laboured and polished, you 
always see the marks of the chisel and hatchet about him ; Curran is 
a rich and glittering ore, which is raised from the mine without effort, and 
in the most exuberant profusion." 



ANECDOTES OF CUKEAN. 525 

It was once observed in Mr. Curraa's company, that the late Mr. Fox 
had no relish for broad humour. " I am not sure," said Mr. Curran, " that 
Fox dislilied humour ; sometimes, when the boj^doa raillery of my animal 
spirits has ruffled the plumage of my good manners, when my mirth has 
turned dancing-master to my veneration, and made it perhaps a little too 
supple, I have sported playfully in the presence of this slumbering lion, 
and now and then he condescended to dandle the child. He laughed 
inwardly. It was not easy to say what Fox would call a mot, but when 
said, I thought I saw a smile rippling over the fine Atlantic of his 
countenance.^'' 

Mr. Curran had occasion to hire a servant ; and wishing to procure a 
person of good character and respectable appearance, he requested a 
friend to look out for such. The friend was a wag, and had very lately 
dismissed his own servant, who happened to be the reverse of what Mr. 
Curran wished for. The friend had two objects to gratify ; one to amuse 
himself with Mr. Curran, the other, to humble the presumptuous ex- 
pectations of an arrogant, dishonest, and conceited fellow, whom, on 
account of his vanity, &c., he had discharged. The candidate was shown 
up one morning to Mr. Curran ; his appearance was much in his favour. 
He was dressed in the best fashion of a Bond-street beau. Mr. Curran was 
for a moment under a mistake ; observing him unfolding some papers, and 
conceiving him to be no less than some gallant defendant in a crim. con. 
action, and that he came to retain him, he requested him to take a chair, 
and asked him. if he had had breakfast. The other answered by producing 
his discharges. Mr. Curran, perceiving his error, proceeded to business ; 
and asked him, after the production of his credentials, " what wages he 
would expect ?" to which he answered, " My last wages at Sir Thomas 

were lOOZ. a year, and two suits of coloured clothes." Mr. Curran 

inwardly started, and observed, " Yon, sir, to be sure, are highly noticed 
by those with whom you have lived ; and, from your appearance, and the 
strong recommendations you have got, even the value you set upon your- 
self cannot be considered too high; and, if all other matters could be 
understood, possibly no difference may arise on this head : but, as my 
occf\sions demand particular and punctilious attention to hours, I would 
be glad to know what time you would wish to devote to yourself." 
"Why, sir, from one to five o'clock, as I generally ride out each day." 
" But if you get these hours, would you be quite exact in your return ?" 
'' Certainly, sir." " What do you generally drink after dinner?" "Why, 
sir, my last allowance was one bottle of wine a day." " Are you quite 



526 APPENDIX. 

certain that a moderate portion of wine would have no injurious effect ?'' 
•' Oh ! certainly not, sir," with a smile. '•' Pray, sir, am I to understand 
you, that you keep your own horses, or am I to keep them for you ?" 
•' Why, sir, out of such small wages, it would be quite impossible 
that I could keep my own horses." '■ Well, sir," said Mr. Curran, •' I 
think I now pretty well understand you : let me see, between wine, 
wages, clothes, horses, keeping, &c. &c., your service may stand me about 
350/. a year." '' Why, something thereabout, sir." Wearied with this 
creature's impudent, arrogant expectations, he ended, by saying, " My 
good friend, there remains but one point of difference between us, which 
you may easily adjust ; it entirely rests with you : suppose we were to 
change sides ; for on these terms, I assure you, I should anxiously desire 
to become your very humble servant /" 

There were two gentlemen of the Irish bar, one a northern, the other a 
southern : they were tall as poplars : of them he said, *' One is the north 
pole, the other the south pole." One of them being seen in London 
walking with Mr. Curran, some person asked him who that extraordinary 
man was, that so much resembled Lisraahago, and what was his business 
to London ? Mr. Curran replied, *' that though he was one of his longest 
acquaintance, yet he did not precisely know what his business to London 
was, except, perhaps, to peep down the chimneys of the Londoners, to see 
what they had for dinner.'- One of those gentlemen had, by the length 
of his legs, so annoyed an English lady who sat opposite to him in a public 
coach, that, when he proposed to some of the company to take a walk for 
a short stage, on his going out he observed, '• I think it will be of great 
use to me to stretch my legs." " Good God ! (the lady remarked,) sir, if 
you do, there will be no enduring you, they are so long already." 

Mr. Mahaffy, (who long presided in the Admirality Court, as deputy for 
Sir Jonah Barrington, the Judge) a very tall gentleman, was retained by 
Archdeacon Verscoyle in a cause which was instituted to try his right to 
a certain church. In one of the stages of the trial, the Archdeacon des- 
pondingly asked Mr. Curran (who was of counsel for him,) his opinion as 
to the event of the suit. Mr. Curran gave him every hope ; and, pointing 
to Mr. Mahaffy, observed, '• My dear Archdeacon, as you have retmned 
the spire, the church can be in no danger." 

Of some person who voted for the Union, and owed his elevation to his 
vote, he observed, '* that he was the foulest bird that ever perched upon 
the ruins of a broken constitution." 



AIiq-EODOTES OF CURRAN. 527 

From one of ihos-e Greek isles recently reilliimed by the vigorous and 
fascinating poetry of the most original writer of this century, a beautiful 
Smyrnese lady, perhaps sister to the Bride of Abydos, lately arrived iu 
Dublin. To the repose and softness of her eye, the finely turned oval of 
her face, there were added a languishment of air, and a richness of dress, 
peculiar to those delicious climates, from which time has not despoiled 
them of every thing by despoiling them of freedom. Such were her 
charms, that she was followed in the public assemblies and in the streets, 
by crowds of admirers. AValking in one of the squares, she was perceived 
by a friend of Mr. Curran, who instantly exclaimed, ''Oh! there is the 
beautiful woman from Smyrna, I must leave you for a moment to see 
her.-' Shortly after returning, he found Mr. Curran, who said, " Well my 
friend, what say you. Quid tibi visa Chios, quid Smyrna ?'' 

He was engaged on behalf of a plain tradesman, a citizen of Dublin, 
who had been ill-treated, where insult was added to injury, and where the 
man was horse-whipped, beaten down, and falsely imprisoned. He com- 
plained through Mr. Curran to a court of justice, and a jury listened to 
his tale of woe and of sufferings, which wanted not the colouring of ima- 
gination ; it was most affectingly told by his counsel : he used no orna- 
ments to dress out the victim which had already suffered so much. His 
appeals were deeply affecting, because natural. He gave up to the jury 
the case of an innocent and oppressed man in terms which were directed 
to the heart, — the jury and the audience were touched : but the client, 
who heard all, was so overv/helmed that he burst forth from a silence he 
had before been noticed for, into a sudden exclamation, accompanied with 
tears : '' Oh ! my Lord, all the counsellor has told you is every word of it 
true, but till this moment I never knew I had been half so cruelly ill- 
treated." 

A hot fool, plunged into distress, was playing at billiards, and having 
wagered his only guinea on the success of the game, became tremulously 
anxious on the last stroke of the ball ; perceiving the clock giving notice 
to strike one, as he hoped, and fearing some distraction, he paused for a 
moment ; another and another succeeded, till the clock went insensibly on 
to twelve. Thus suspended, his irritation increased, he played and lost, 
and in his rage seizing the ball, drove it at the clock with such fury and 
force that he broke it in pieces : the owner sought compensation and 
obtained it. This being related in the presence of Mr. Curran, he observed 
" That the damage should be very small as the clock struck first J* 



528 APPENDIX. 

An Englishman, visiting Dublin for the first, sat next Mr. Grattan at a 
civic feast, and found him as dull — as the place and occasion required. 
He was much disappointed ; and seeking an occasion to meet Mr. Curran 
a few days after at dinner, not apprised of the unbroken intimacy and 
friendship which politically and privately ever subsisted between those 
gentlemen, indiscreetly observed, that Mr. Grattan, appeared to possess 
nothing striking in conversation, and to have exhibited nothing of those 
extraordinary powers for which he was so celebrated. Mr. Curran started, 
and replied, " Surely, sir, you cannot expect that the sun will be always 
found in its meridian : permit me, however, to ask you where you had the 
good fortune to have met this gentleman." On being answered, at a city 
feast ; " Oh, yes : it is very true : I comprehend it perfectly. Yet, take 
my word for it, my good sir, he is still a sweet bird, though he never sings 
but in his own climate.''^ 

Shortly after the establishment of our colony at Botany Bay, when the 
population was fast increasing, Mr. Curran in one of his speeches upon a 
criminal trial, observed, " that should the colony thrive, and become a 
regular civil government, what a pleasant thing it would be to have the 
laws administered by judges reprieved at the gallows; by justices who 
had picked pockets ; by counsellors who had pleaded at the bar for their 
lives ; by lawyers who had set the law at defiance ; to see house-breakers 
appointed to protect the public property ; highwaymen entrusted with the 
public money : rioters invested with commissions of the peace, and shop- 
lifters to regulate the markets. Such, however, said he, were the original 
people of Rome 5 and such the foundation of the states of America." 

A beautiful young woman of the name of Serjeant, whose father was an 
officer of a yeomanry corps in Dublin, happened to pass Mr. Curran in 
the street ; struck by her beauty, he inquired of a friend who she was, and 
being answered, that she was the lovely Miss Serjeant whom he had seen 
ten years before at Cheltenham — " What, not married yet? then I suppose 
her father will make her &, permanent Serjeant." 

Mr. Hoare's countenance was grave and solemn, with an expression like 
one of those statues of the Brutus head : he seldom smiled ; and if he 
smiled, he smiled in such a sort as seemed to have rebuked the spirit that 
could smile at all. Mr. Curran once observing a beam of joy to enliven 
his face, remarked, " Whenever I see smiles on Hoare's countenance, I 
think they are like tin clasps on an oaken coffin.i" 



ANECDOTES OF OUERAN. 529 

A gentleman of one of the s*«4hern counties in Ireland, well known 
for a certain determination of mind, and unaccommodating strength of 
resolution, was perceived to be very active on some trial in which Mr. 
Currau v/as engaged ; it was proposed to refer the case to the arbitration 
of this gentleman, as he was reputed to be an honest man : on the other 
side an objection was raised, founded on the known sternness of his char- 
acter ; and it was also remarked, that his iron leg was the softest part 
about him ; '• Oh, surely," said Mr. Curran, " that must be irony. ''^ 

The printed speech of some young barrister* had been laid before Mr. 
Curran, and his opinion asked after he had carefully perused it. '' Why," 
said he, ''there is much more of flower than figure in it — more of fancy 
than design : it is like (as I suspect the mind of the author to be) a tree 
in full blossom — shake it, and you have them on the ground in a minute, 
and it would take a season to reproduce them." 

An eminent member of Parliament, a leader of the opposition, being 
In the company of Mr. Curran, had heard him copiously and vehemently 
descant on the numerous grievances under which he represented Ireland 
to be labouring. This gentleman, became very urgent in his solicitations 
to get materials for some good speeches from such a source, rather impru- 
dently requested of Mr. Curran to supply him with a list of these grievances, 
accompanied by such observations and details as he would wish to make 
upon them. Mr. Curran suspecting that there was full as much of per- 
sonal interest as of patriotism in the request, declined gratifying it. Some 
friend asked him, in a few days after, why he did not comply with the ear- 
nest desire of the person alluded to. "No," said Mr. Curran, '* I have no 
notion whatever, at my time of life, nor indeed at any, to turn hodman to 
any political architect.''^ 

A barrister of the name of Going had, among other pleasantries, a 
favourite story, which he so agreeably exaggerated every time he told it, 
that at length it became too monstrous for belief. He was charged with 
this in presence of Mr. Curran, who observed, that the story was not the 
worse for being enlarged, that it was an excellent story, and had the 
merit of proceedint 
gathers strength by going." 

* Charles Phillips, his future biographer.— M. 

23 



530 APPENDIX. 

Speaking of the supineness of Government, while the fire of rebellion was 
not yet extinguished, but raked over, he observed they were like the silly 
sea-boy, who thought that during the time he slept, the ship ceased to 
move. 

lu Parliament, on the debate of an iraportaut question, involving some 
of the deepest interests of his country ; perceiving the House to be very 
thinly attended, he rose, and after many arguments and observations, he 
at length demanded in a commanding tone of voice of the Speaker — '• Where 
are the members? have they not been summoned ? It seems then," said he, 
" they are not forthcoming ; perhaps at this very moment, they may be 
found chained in couples in the kennel, or under the management of the 
ministers' secretary.-' 

Enthusiastically fond of music, he perceived at a rehearsal, one of those 
Roderigos or foolish gentlemen, who haunt concerts and oratorios, busy 
and bustling, ordering and disordering everything : vexed with the popin- 
jay, he observed to a friend — ''Mark that fellow, he is like the fool who 
blows the bellows for the organist, and because he does so, he thinks it is 
himself who performs the instrument." 

Speaking of the profession of the law, he compared the hope of suc- 
cess to the gamut of the musicians ; he said one should gather his strength 
and begin with the low notes; and this he illustrated by saying, ''It 
reminded him of a cunning barber, who began his trade by shaving a 
beggar, in the hope that one day or other he would rise to shave a 
duchess.'* 

Walking one evening in autumn, in Saint James's Park, accompanied 
by Mr. Charles Phillips, celebrated equally for his eloquence as for his 
poetry, there suddenly came on a violent tempest, which rived the gnarled 
oak, and shook the leaves, and strewed them over the walks, as thick as 
those in Yallombroso, which Mr. Curran remarking, said, "My dear friend, 
observe here ; we are desired by philosophy to take lessons from Nature ; 
yet how foolishly does she seem to act on the present occasion ; she flings 
away her blessings and her decorations ; she is at this moment very busy 
in stripping those defenceless trees, at the approach of winter and of 
cold, at that very season when they most want covering." 

THE END. 



INDEX, 



Abercombie, Sir Ralph, protests against the 
Government's reign of terror in Irehind, 
and is recalled, 835. 

Aldvvorth family at Newmarket, 2 ; their 
kindness to Curran, 4. 

Apjolin, W., Curran's poetical address to, 
1-i; Curran's character of, 16. 

American Bar, Curran's early intention of 
joining it, 5T. 

American Revolution, effect of, in Ireland, 
95. 

Appendix, 517. 

Armstrong, Captain, the informer who be- 
trayed the ^hearses, 256; described by 
Davis, ib.; his infamous character, 264 ; 
his evidence, 266: denounced by Curran, 
277 

Atkinson, Joseph, friend of Curran and 
Moore, 3S7. 

Avonmore, Lord (Barry Yelverton), edu- 
cated at INliddleton, 5; liis regard for 
Curran, 7S; complimented by Curran, 79; 
founds tlie Order of the Monks of the 
Screw, SO; Curran's Address to, 83; his 
habit of anticipation, 85 ; reference to, in 
Parliament, 107 ; presides at Orr's trial, 
207 ; his opinion of Blackstone, 208 ; his 
patriotism. 

Bar, the Irish, mode of admission to, 17; 
points of difference from the English bar, 
60. 

Barrington, Sir Jonah, his account of Henry 
Sheares' last appeal to the Government, 
270. 

Bond, Oliver, indicted for treason, 293; de- 
fended by Curran, 294; convicted, and 
dies in prison, 302. 

Boor, the English, described, 23. 

Boyse, Rev. Nathaniel, rector of Newmar- 
ket, educates Curran, 4 ; at Paris, 127 ; 
letter from, 129 ; visits Curran in Dublin, 
131). 

Brownlow, Mr., Grattan's sketch of, SB. 

Burgh, llussey, sketched by Grattan, 88 ; 
notice of, 89. 

Burke, Edward, his eloquence compared 
with Curran's, 492, 



Burrowes, Peter, his defence of Grattaii, 
100. 

Bushe, Charles Kendal, 04. 

Byrne, NVilliani Michael, convicted and e.K- 
ecuted for treason, 293. 

Byron, I;ord, borrows an image from Cur- 
ran, 399 ; compares Erskine and Curran, 
455 ; his opinion of Curran's imagination, 
508. 

Carleton, Lord, presides at the trial of the 
Sheareses, 256 ; refuses to adjourn the 
Court, after sixteen hours' sitting, 265. 

Castlereagh, Lord, his humaniti/, 254. 

Catacombs of Paris, 444. 

Catholic Emancipation, Curran's early ad- 
vocacy of, 33 ; resisted by the Irish Par- 
liament, 102; supported by Curran, 195. 

Catholic Penal Code, 91. 

Charlemont, Lord, 233; early opposition to 
the Catholic Claims, 399. 

Clare, Earl of: his life, 108; contest and 
duel with Curran, 109; virtually shuts 
him out of all Chancery practice, 156; 
Curran's retort to, before the Privy Coun- 
cil, 162. 

Clonmel, Lord, his rise, 62; quarrels with 
Curran, 192. 

Cockayne, the informer, anecdote of, 189. 

Courts of Law in Ireland, irregularities in, 
66. 

Creagh , Dr. Richard, his character of " Jack 
Curran," 36; antipathy to keening, 52; 
becomes Cui'ran's father-in-law, 55. 

Croppies, the, 251. 

Curran, Amelia, dies in Rome, 355. 

Curran James, Seneschal of Newmarket, 2; 
his education, 3. 

Curran, John Fhilpot; Date and Place of 
Birth, 1 ; his Descent, 2 ; his Parentage, 
3 ; his Education, 4; his Schoolfellows. 5; 
works Punch's l'uppet-Sh<nv, 6; enters 
Trinity College, Dublin, as Sizar, ih. ; his 
favorite Classics, ih. ; his Coll>-ge friend- 
ships, 7 ; writes a Sermon for Mr. Stack, 
9 ; adopts the Law as his Profession, 10 ; 
Satire on Dr. Duigenan, ih. ; his College 
life, 11 ; Poetical Address to Mr. Apjohn, 
13 ; leaves College, 17 ; enters the Middle 



532 



INDEX. 



Temple, ib. ; Letters to Mr. Weston, 18 ; 
Journey to London, 19 ; describes an 
English Boor, 23 ; visits Hampton Court, 
24; his Life in London, 25; Letter to 
Jerry Keller, 28 ; his Oratory, early Fail- 
ure, and Success, as related by himself, 
29; attends Debating Clubs, 83; early 
advocacy of Catholic Emancipation, ib. ; 
Poem on Friendship by, 34 ; his Character 
sketched by Dr. Creagh, 36; Hudson's 
Predictions of, 37 ; Letter from London, 
39; his Industry in the Temple, 42; his 
Society in London, 46 ; Interviews with 
Macklin, ib. ; early Application and At- 
tainments, 48 ; favorite Authors, 51 ; 
Scene at a Wake, 53 ; Attachment to the 
Irish Peasantry, 54 ; Marries Miss 
Creagh, 55 ; called to the Irish Bar, 58 ; 
his forensic Oratory, 59 ; his Firmness, 
65 ; early Success at the Bar, 69 ; Contest 
■with Judge Robinson, 70; advocacy of a 
Catholic Priest, assaulted by Lord Done- 
I'aile, 71 ; obtains a Verdict, 74 ; animad- 
version on Captain St. Leger's conduct, 
75; Duel with, 76; receives Father 
Neale's dying benediction, Z(^-i. ; supported 
by Lord Avonmore's friendship, 'i 8; his 
Character of, and Address to Lord Avon- 
more, 79 ; joins the Monks of the Screw, 
80 ; List of the Members, ib. ; appointed 
Prior of the Order, 81 ; writes the Char- 
ter Song, 82; pathetic Address to Lord 
Avonmore, 83 ; their Quarrel and Recon- 
ciliation, 84; enters Parliament, 86; how 
he obtained his Seat, 87 ; joins the Na- 
tional Party, 101 ; inferior character of 
his Parliamentary Speeches, 105 ; supports 
Flood's proposition for a Reform in Par- 
liament, 106 ; his early Career in Parlia- 
ment, 107 ; Contest and Duel with Fitz- 
gibbon (Earl of Clare), 109; Speaks 
against Orde's Commercial Propositions, 
111; Speech on the Pension List, 112; 
Character of the Pension List, 114; in 
full Practice at the Bar, 115 ; Letter from, 
116; builds the Priory at Newmarket, «6 ; 
his Companions and Avocations there, 
117; Occasional A'^erses, 119; Speech on 
Irish Disturbances, 120 ; on the Right Boy 
Oath, the Pension List, and Navigation 
Laws, 122 ; first visit to France, ib. ; Let- 
ter from Dieppe, 123; from Rouen, 125; 
visit to a French Abbot, 126 ; Letter from 
Paris, 127; Scene at the Opera House, 
128 ; receives Mr. Boyce in Dublin, 130 ; 
Speech on Contraband Trade, 131 ; visits 
Holland, zZ>. ,• Letter from Helvoetsluys, 
ib. ; from Amsterdam, 132 ; the King's 
illness and the Regency question, 134 ; 
the Ermine and a Peerage offered to Cur- 
ran, and refused, ib. ; his Speech in Par- 
liament, 135 ; rei)lies to Fitzgibbon, 140; 
Speech on the Division of the Board of 
Stam])s and Accounts, 143 ; attacked by 
Sir Boyle Roche, 147; his Reply, 149; 
Correspondence with Major Hobart, 150 ; 
Duel, 165 ; shut out of Chancery Practice 
by Lord Clare, 156 ; signal vengeance for 



the wrong, 158 ; Alderman Howlson's 
case, 159 ; appeal to the Viceroy, Chan- 
cellor, and Privy Council, 161); strong 
Personal Attack on Lord Clare, 162; Par- 
liamentary Speeclies, 165 ; defends Ham- 
ilton Rowan, 170 ; Universal Emancipa- 
tion, 172 ; the Liberty of the Press, ib. ; 
noble Peroration, 174: Conviction, 175 ; 
Defence of the "Defender:-," 177; near 
approach to Office, 1"78 ; defends Jackson, 
179 ; Jackson's Suicide, 182 ; Contest 
with Lord Clonmel, 192; Parliament- 
ary Career, 196 ; last Year [1795] of his 
Legislative life, 198; retires from Parlia- 
ment, 206; Speech for William Orr, 
206; defence of Peter Finnerty, 209; 
denounces informei's, 214; defence of 
Patrick Finney, 217; cross-exam- 
ines James O'Brien, the informer, 
218; denounces his perjuries, 229; 
prosecutes him to Conviction for Mur- 
der, 231 ; Speech on the trial of the 
Sheareses, 257 and 2t)4 ; triumph of mind 
over physical exhaustion, 267 ; defence of 
Oliver Bond, 294 ; cross-examines Rey- 
nolds, the informer, 296 ; his character, 
800 ; appears as counsel against the at- 
tainder of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 303; 
subjected to Orange insults, 307; visits 
England, 808; Lines to Lady Charlotte 
Rawdon, 810; trial of Wolfe Tone, 813; 
Curran moves for a habeas corx^us for the 
convict, 315; Curran's prediction as to 
effects of the Union, 318; its effects on his 
mind, ib. ; speech in Napper Tandy's case, 
321 ; speech against Sir Henry Hayes, for 
abduction, 380: appears for Hevey v. 
IMajor Sirr, 882 ; compliments Godwin, 
the novelist, 837 ; visits Paris, 338 ; letter 
to his son, 339 ; Emmett's revolt, defence 
of Owen Kirwan, 341 ; Curran suspected 
of complicity with Emmett, 348 ; tenders 
himself and papers for examination, 350 ; 
appears before the Privy Council, meets 
Lord Clare, and defeats calumny, 351; 
his domestic affairs, 857; his wile's infi- 
delity, 359; throws his own feelings into 
the case Massy ■». Marquis of Headford, 
860 ; his suit against Mr. Sandys, 361 ; 
appointed Master of the Rolls, 363 ; ad- 
dress of the Bar to, 364; history of his 
appointment, ib. ; iil-treated by Ponson- 
by, the Chancellor, 365 ; his letter to Grat- 
tan thereon, 366 ; was unsuited for equity 
business, 375; his decision in Merry v. 
Power, ib. ; his ] erson and manners de- 
scribed by Phillips, 381 ; his literary pro- 
jects, 382 ; letter to McNally, 385 ; to Miss 
Philnot, 386 ; visits Scotland, SS7 ; Eulogy 
on the Scottish nation, 890 ; letter to P. Les- 
lie, «'&. ; to R. Hetherington, 392; Parlia- 
mentary contest for Newry, 396 ; address to 
the electors, 397 ; his reception, iJ/. ; speech 
to the electors, 898; resigns the contest, 
404 ; letter to Sir J. Swinburne, 404 ; to the 
Duke of Sussex, 407 ; his health declines, 
417 ; letters from England, ib. ; Poem to 
Sleep, 423 ; resigns his judicial seat, 424 ; 



INDEX. 



683 



address from the Catholic Board, ih. ; his 
reply to, 425 ; reiniiiiscences of by Phillips, 
42S; his later life at the Priory, 430 ; his 
sympathy with the people, 431 ; coiupli- 
meut paid by Holt, ih. ; \isit to Paris, 432 ; 
political projects, 435; scenes in Paris, 
440; epigram on Niipoleon, 442; at the 
Catacombs, 444 ; French drama, 44(3 ; 
sight of Bluciier, 450 ; the end ap- 
proaches, 451 ; Phillips' account, 451 ; 
intimacy with Madame de Stael, 452; 
with Lord Erskine, 453; with the Prince 
llegent, 454; Byron's description of, 455 ; 
Parali'tic attaclc, 457; last visit to Ire- 
land, ib., melancholy forebodings, 45S ; 
the last hours, 460; expires at the age of 
sixty-eight, 4G1 ; his funeral, 462 ; his 
will, i!> , removal of his remains to Ire- 
land, 464; Sarcophagus at Glasnevin and 
monument in St. Patrick's Cathedral, ih.^ 
his eloquence, 466 ; sympathy with the 
People, 469; objections to his style, 411 ; 
his slight preparations, 473 ; his extempo- 
raneous eloquence, 475 ; his own idea of 
its power, 477 ; his pathos, 47S ; variety 
of his power, 4S0 ; his imagination, ib., 
his earnestness, 4So ; propensity to meta- 
phor, 4S4; his peculiar school of elo- 
quence, 4SS ; its origin, 490 ; compared 
with Lord Chatham's style, ib. ; Curran 
compared witu Burke, 492 ; his skill in 
cro.->s-examination, 496 ; his legal read- 
ing, 408; his judicial ability, 499; his 
general reading, ib. ; his conversation, 
500 ; his wit, 501 ; his boti-mots, 502 ; his 
wit compared with Sheridan's, 5u2; his 
manners, 505 ; his political principles and 
contests, 506 ; his person, 507 ; his ap- 
pearance in his maturer years, ib. ; 
Byron's opinion of his imagination, 50S ; 
his voice and delivery, 508 ; his peculi- 
arities, 509 ; his temperance in diet, 510 ; 
personal traits of character, 511 ; fond of 
novel reading, 512; his character, 513; 
his acknowledged eminence, 515. 

Curran, Mrs. J. P. ; her marriage, 359; her 
infidelity, 381: last interview with her 
husband, 863; is provided for by his 
will, 462. 

Curran, Sarah, mother of J. P. Curran, 3; 
Davis's character of, 3; epitaph on, 9; 

Curran, Sarah, her love-passages with 
Robert Emmett, 340 ; her lover's farewell, 
854 ; her marriage and death, 355. 

Cuaran, William Henry, son and biogra- 
pher of Curran, paasim. 

Curran's poems, 34, 82, 117, 119, 120, 228, 
810,423,448. 

Davis, Thomas, his records of Curran's 

youth, 5. 
Day, Judge, a schoolfellow of Curran, 5. 
Debating Clubs, Curran's early practice 

in, 33. 
De Stael, Madame, anecdote of, 452 ; her 

opinion of Curran's colloquial powers, 

503. 
Defenders, The, then- character, 240. 



Doneralle, Lord, assaults a Catholic Priest 
72. 

Downes, Chief Justice, anecdote of, 216. 

Drenuan, Dr., an Irish patriot, 178 

Duigenaii, Dr. Patrick, satire oa by Cur- 
ran, 60; parliamentary fracas with, 210 ; 
meets Curran in Westminster Abbey, 506. 

Emmett, Robert, his revolt, 341 ; his cha- 
racter, 348; his passion for Sarah Cur- 
ran, 349 ; failure of his insurrection, ib. ; 
arrest, ib. ; letter to Curran, 352 ; to 
Richard Curran, 354 ; his execution, 
356; his trial as given by Madden, i&. 
Plunket's attack on him, ib, 

English Law, remarks on the study of, 5G. 

English misrule in Ireland, 91 ; its system 
and principles, 92. 

Erskine, Lord, eloquence of, 61 ; anecdote 
of, 453 ; compared with Curran, 455. 

Ferris, Sir John, impromptu to, by Curran, 
268. 

Finnerty, Peter, trial of, for libel, 206 ; de- 
fended by Curran, 209 ; convicted, fined, 
and imprisoned, 217. 

Finney, Patrick, tried for liigh treason, 217. 

Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, implicated by 
Reynolds, 299; act of attainder against 
his blood, 302; resisted by Curran, 303 ; 
attainder removed, ib. 

Fitzgibbon, John. See Lord Clare. 

Flood, Henry, character of, by G-rattan, 88; 
proposes a reform in Parliament, 106. 

Forbes, Mr., character of by Grattan, 83. 

Forensic Jocularity, 67. 

French Revolution, effects of, in Ireland, 
235. 

Friendship, early poem on, by Curran, 34. 

George IIL, insanity of, 134 ; its frequent 
recurrence, 135 ; made a party pivot of, 
136. 

Godwin, William, Curran's compliment to, 
837. 

Grattan, Henry, his opinion of Irish intel- 
lect, 62; Sketches of eminent Irishmen, 
by, 87; his character, 99 ; defence of, by 
Burrowes, 100 ; his death, 515. 

Hampton Court, described by Curran, 24. 

Hastings, Trial of Warren, 61. 

Hayes, Sir Henry, his abduction of Misa 

Pike, 829 ; compulsory marriage, 830 ; 

flight, return, and trial, ib. ; conviction 

and transportation, 331. 
Hevey, John, his persecutions by Major 

Sirr, 832 ; his death, 336. 
Hobart, Major, his correspondence with 

Curran, 150 ; duel, 155. 
Hoche, General, heads the French invasion 

of Ireland, 201 and 250; second expedi- 
tion, 812. 
Holt, the rebel general, 431. 
Holland, Curran's visit to, 131, 
Hudson, the Dublin dentist, a friend of 

Curran's, letters from, 37. 
I Humouroua forensic illustratloni, 69. 



634 



INDEX. 



"If sadly thinking," the Deserter's song, by 

Curran, 117. 
Ireland, sketch of its history before 17S3, 90. 
Irish eloquence, character and causes of, 60. 
Irish inlormers, base character of, 188. 
Irish judges, jocularity of, 07. 
Irish juries, pusillanimity of, 189 ; Curran's 

remarks on, 191. 
Irish landlords of the last century, 245. 
Irish revolution of 1782, 89; its progress 

and extent, 98. 

Jackson, Rev. William, a state prisoner, 
175; trial of, 179; refuses to escape from 
prison, 181 ; conviction and suicide, 182. 

Keening at Irish funerals, 53, 

Keller, Jerry, one of Curran's schoolfellows, 
5 ; letter from Curran to, 28. 

Kirwan, Owen, trial and conviction of, 341. 

Kilwarden, Lord (Arthur Wolfe) his career, 
65; solicits Curran to join the Govern- 
ment 179; stands Cui-ran's friend in 
1798 ; murder of, 347. 

Lawyers in the Irish Parliament, 63. 
Longueville, Lord, returns Curran to Par- 
liament, 87. 
Lucas, Dr., an exile for his patriotism, 93. 

Macklin, the actor, Curran's interviews 
with, 46. 

McCann, John, tried, convicted, and exe- 
cuted for treason, 293. 

McNally, Leonard, his regard for Curran, 
217 ; speaks against time, 228, 

Malone, Antony (Irish Judge) sketched by 
Grattan, 87. 

Middleton, School of, where Curran was 
educated, 4, 

Moira, Earl of, notice of, 309 ; Curran's 
character of, 402. 

Monks of the Screw, founded by Lord Avon- 
more, SO; list of members, z&,; Curran, 
the Prior, writes the Charter Song, 82. 

Moore, Thomas, his intimacy with Curran, 
457. 

Napoleon, Curran's estimate of, 345 ; epigram 
on, 442. 

Neale, Rev. Mr., a Catholic clergyman, 
assaulted by Lord Doneraile,72; Curran's 
advocacy of, 73; obtains a verdict, 74; 
gives a dying benediction to Curran, 76. 

Newmarket, Curran born at, 1, 

Newry election, 396 ; Curran's speech, 398. 

Norbury, Lord, prosecutes the Sheareses as 
Attorney-General, 284; insists on the 
trial proceeding after sixteen hours 
sitting, 267 ; his character of Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald, 304. 

O'Brien, James, the informer, 218 ; his 
perjuries denounced, 229; is executed 
lor murder, 231. 

O'Conneil's character of Curran, 464. 

O'Connor, the Bard in Newmarket, 118. 



O'Grady, Standish (Viscount GuiUiamore), 

Attorney-General of 1803, 350. 
O'Leary, Father, 125; introduces Curran to 

a French monastery, 126. 
O'Kegan, William, his recollections of Cur- 
ran, 6, et passim; his description of 

Curran, 507. 
Opera, French, scene at, 123. 
Orde, Thomas, Irish Secretary (afterwards 

Lord Bolton) his commercial propositions, 

111. 
Order of St. Patri k. Monks of the. see 

Clonics of the Screio. 
Orr, William, trial of 206 ; Curran's speech 

for 207; thrice respited, and finally 

executed, 208. 
Osborne, Sir William, sketched by Grattan, 

88. 

Parliament of Ireland, nursery of great 
men, 64 ; reform of, 94 ; its constituent 
parts, 100; Octennial Bill passes and 
disbands the Irish Parliamentary dicta- 
tors, 94; surrender the fruits of their 
triumph, 103. 

Penal laws, 91. 

Pension list, Curran's speech in 112 ; second 
speech against 122. 

Pery, Lord Grattan's sketch of, 88. 

Phillips, C, his introduction to Curran, 381 ; 
his reminiscences, 428 ; account of his 
last days, 451 ; hia description of Curran 
fifty years ago, 507. 

Pike, Mary, abducted by Sir H. Hayes, 329 ; 
compulsory marriage, 330 ; prosecutes 
Hayes to conviction, ib. 

Pitt's eloquence, 61. 

Plunket, William, Conyngham, 64 ; acts as 
Counsel for John Sheares, 264 ; against 
Robert Emmett, 358; against Curran in 
" Curran v. Sandys," 362. 

Ponsonby George, notice of 250 ; his ill- 
treatment of Curran, 365. 

Priory, The, Curran's country-house at 
Newmarket, 116. 

Priory, The, (Curran's seat near Dublin) his 
melancholy hours at, 358. 

Putting down the Young Patriot, 110. 

Rawdon, Lady Charlotte, Curran's lines to, 
310. 

Rebellion of Ninety-eight, 234; its causes, 
235 ; organization of, 238 ; training of 
the masses, 241 ; aided by the French, 
2-43; the Government and the gentry 
against the people, 244; the conspiracy 
fomented by the Executive, 250 ; put 
down by summary and sanguinary 
means, 252; alarm of the legislative 
body at, 253. 

Regency question, 134 ; Pitt's plan of re- 
strictions, 189. 

Repartee of the lower Irish, 67. 

Revolution of 16SS, effects of, 91. 

Reynolds, Thomas, the informer, 298 ; his 
character as a youth, 294; his reward, 
ib.; cross-examined by Curran, 296; his 
presence of mind, 800. 



INDEX. 



535 



Robinson, Judge, Curran's contest with, 70. 

Roche, Sir Boyle, defence of the Pension 
List, 113 ; attack on Curran in Parlia- 
ment, 147 ; is replied to, 149. 

Rowan, Archibald Hamilton; joins the 
United Irishmen, 109 ; indicted for pub- 
lishing a seditious libel, 170; eloquently- 
defended by Curi-an, ib. ; conviction, im- 
prisonment, and escape, 175. 

St. Leger, Hon. Captain, assaults an aged 
priest, 74; duel with Curran, 75; his 
death, 76. 

Scotland, Curran's eulogy on, 890. 

Screw, monks of the, 80. 

Sheares, Henry and John, 255 ; join the 
Rebel party, and are betrayed and arres- 
ted, 256; brought to trial, z/"'. ; Curran's 
speech for, 267 ; conviction, 288; useless 
appeal to the Court, ib. ; letters 270 and 
271 ; execution, 272. 

Sheridan's wit compared with Curran's, 502. 

Sirr, Major, prosecutes John Hevey, 832 ; 
trial at law for damages, 336. 

Stack, Rev. Richard, letters from Curran 
to.T. 



Tandy, Napper, leads the popular party in 
Lord Mayor's election, 159 ; trial of, 320. 

Toler, John ; see Lord Ilorhurij. 

Tone, Theobald Wolfe, reputed author of 
United Irishmen's Constitution, 239: 
his efforts to bring Frencli troops into 
Ireland, 243; trial of, 311 ; captured in a 
Frencli ship, 312 ; justifies his conduct, 
313; condemnation and suicide, 315 ; his 
career, 317. 

Union, Act of, passed by the baseness and 
treachery of the Iri^h Legislature, 103, 

" United Irishmen," 239. 

Volunteers, the Irish, 96; described by 
Curran, ib. ; swell to an army of 80,000 
men, 97 ; their influence upon public mea- 
sures, 93; obtain Ireland's recognition as 
a free nation, 99 ; not a Protestant Asso- 
ciation, 102. 

Wake, Scene at a, 53. 

Weston, Rev. Henry, Curran's letters to, 

18 ; Poem addressed to, 34. 
Whig Club, the Irish, 238. 
Wolfe, Arthur, see Lord Kihcarden. 



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